“It doesn’t sound like a very strong case against her,” Kate said, when Leo had told her the story and consumed several yellowback somethings; he went on to eel.
“It’s not; but it’s the sort of case they’ll win. They’ll bring on all the girl’s friends, and what’s on Beatrice’s side? A devoted sister, and all the stereotypes in the world to tell you she had a fit of frantic jealousy and knocked the girl’s head in.”
“You sound rather involved.”
“I’m always involved; that’s why I’m so good at what I do, and why it’s interesting. I also know how to get uninvolved at five o’clock and go home, unlike high-class lawyers.”
“So Sally’s arguments have a certain cogency.”
“Naturally. That’s the trouble. It’s a little early to tell, but it looks to me like either she cops or, as my clients say, she’ll blow trial and get a life term. As far as I can see it’s a dilemma with only one way out. Find the real killer. Right up your alley, I rather thought.”
Kate, who had decided on only one martini, waved for the waiter and ordered another. “I’ve known you so long,” she said, “that I’m not going to exchange debating points. We can both take it as said. If I wanted to talk with your murderer, would I have to go out to Riker’s Island?”
“No. Anyway, I’m pretty sure Sally will get bail after the indictment, if we have any luck at all with the judge. There’s every reason not to keep the old gal in jail, and Sally can be very persuasive. In which case you can visit her in the apartment they have just mortgaged to get the bail.”
“Leo, I want one thing perfectly clear….”
“As you said, dear Aunt Kate, we know the debating points. Just talk to the elderly sisters, together, separately, and let me know what you decide. End of discussion, unless of course, you decide they’re innocent and I can help.”
“I thought it was just one of them?”
“It is; but Cynthia’s the one I met first, so I sort of think of them as a pair. I’ve never met Beatrice; just caught sight of her with the other women prisoners at the arraignment. But I have met Cynthia, I’ve heard Angela on Cynthia, and I’m not ready to believe that Cynthia’s sister could have murdered anyone.”
Leo had told Kate that for a woman of Professor Beatrice Sterling’s background, experience of the criminal system would be a nightmare; indeed, Beatrice, as she asked Kate to call her, had the look of someone who has seen horrors. They were meeting in the sisters’ apartment after bail had been granted. Cynthia, now that Beatrice was home, was clearly taking the tack that a good dose of normality was what was needed, and she was providing it, with a kind of courageous pretense at cooperation from Beatrice that touched Kate, who allowed a certain amount of desultory chatter to go on while she reviewed the facts in her mind.
Burglary had always been a possibility, but it was considered an unlikely one. The victim’s wallet had not been taken, though the cash, if any, had. Her college ID, credit cards, and a bank card remained. Pictures that had been in the wallet had been vigorously torn apart and scattered over the body. Her college friends, although they knew the most intimate facts of her life as was usual these days, did not know how much money she usually carried or if anything else was missing from her wallet. She had been bludgeoned with a tennis award, a metal statue of a young woman swinging a racket that had been heavily weighted at the base. The assailant had worn gloves. What had doomed Beatrice was not so much these facts, not even the identification by the young man (though this was crushing), but the record of deep dislike between the victim and the accused that no one, not even the accused, denied, Motive is not enough for a conviction, but, as Leo had put it, the grounds for reasonable doubt were also, given the likely testimony of the victim’s friends, slim. Kate put down her teacup and began to speak of what faced them.
“You are our last hope,” Cynthia said, before Kate could begin.
“If that is true,” Kate answered, looking directly into the eyes of first one and then the other, “then you are going to have to put up with my endless questions, and with retelling your story until you think even jail would be preferable. Now, let’s start at the beginning, with a description of this seminar itself. How did you come to teach it, were these students you had known before, what was the subject? I want every detail you can think of, and then some. Start at the beginning.”
Beatrice took a deep breath, and kept her eyes on her hands folded in her lap. “I didn’t know those particular students at all,” she said, “and I didn’t particularly want to teach that seminar. For two reasons,” she added, catching Kate’s “Why?” before it was spoken. “It was in women’s studies, which I have never taught. I’m a feminist, but my field is early Christian history, and I have not much expertise about contemporary feminist scholarship. The seminar was for writing honors theses in women’s studies, which meant there were no texts; in addition, the students were all doing subjects in sociology or political science or anthropology, and I know little of these fields beyond their relation to my own rather ancient interests. I had worked hard, and under some unpleasant opposition, to help establish women’s studies at our college, so I had little excuse not to take my turn in directing this seminar; in any case, there was no one else available. There were twelve students, all seniors, and yes, it did occur to me to relate it to the Last Supper, which I mention only because you will then understand what the seminar invoked in me.” A sigh escaped, but Beatrice, with an encouraging pat from Cynthia, continued.
“The young are rude today; anyone who teaches undergraduates can tell you that. They are not so much aggressively rude as inconsiderate, as though no perspective but theirs existed. The odd part of this is that the most radical students, those who talk of little but the poor and the racially oppressed, are, if anything, ruder than the others, courtesy being beneath them. Forgive me if I rant a bit, but you wanted to hear all this.
“The point is, they hated me on sight and I them. Well, that’s an exaggeration. But when I tried to suggest what seemed to me minimal scholarly standards, they sneered. Quite literally, they sneered. I talked this over with the head of women’s studies, and she admitted that they are known to be an unruly bunch, and that they had not wanted me for their seminar, but she couldn’t do anything except cheer me on. They spoke about early feminists, like me, as though we were a bunch of co-opted creeps; worst of all, they never talked to me or asked me anything; they addressed each other, turning their backs on me. You’re a teacher, so perhaps this will sound less silly to you than to the police. It was the kind of rudeness that is close to rape. Or murder. Oh, don’t think I don’t usually run quite successful classes; I do. Students like me. Of course, my students are self-selected: they’re interested in the subject, which they elect to take. But even when I teach a required history survey, I do well. I’m not as intimate with the students as some of the younger teachers, and I regret that, but I grew up in a different time, and it seems best to be oneself and not pretend to feelings one doesn’t have. Do you agree?”
Kate nodded her agreement.
“The dead girl-they called each other only by their first names, and hers was Daphne, but I remembered her last name (which the police found suspicious) because it was Potter-Jones, and that sounded to me like something out of a drama from the BBC-she was the rudest of the lot and was writing on prostitutes, or, as they insisted on calling them, sex-workers. I should add that all their subjects were enormous, totally unsuitable to undergraduates, and entirely composed of oral history. All history, all previously published research, was lies. They would talk to real sex-workers, real homeless women, real victims of botched abortions, that sort of thing. When I suggested some academic research, they positively snorted. Daphne said that being a sex-worker was exactly like being a secretary-they were equally humiliating jobs-but at least we might try to see that sex-workers got fringe benefits. My only private conversation, if you can call it that-they never, any of them, came to my office hours or consulted me for a minute
-was with Daphne. She had been advised at a seminar to pretend to be a sex-worker and try to get into a ‘house’ so that she might meet some prostitutes; she had, not surprisingly to me but apparently to her and all the others, found it difficult to get prostitutes to talk to her. I took her aside at the end of the class and told her I thought that might be rather dangerous. She laughed, and said she had told her mother, who thought it was a great idea. I know all this may sound exaggerated or even the wanderings of a demented person, but this is, I promise you, a straightforward rendition of my experience. I have spared you some details, considering them repetitive. No doubt you get the picture. It occurred to me, when I was in Riker’s Island, that perhaps I might now be of some interest to the members of the seminar, except of course that they thought I had murdered their friend, so I failed to interest them even as an accused murderer. Cynthia thought I oughtn’t to mention that, but my view is if, knowing it all, you can’t believe me, I might as well plead to manslaughter as my young but clearly smart lawyer urges.”
Kate did not break for some minutes the silence that fell upon them. She was trying to order her perceptions, to analyze her responses. Could the hate Beatrice felt have driven her to violence? Kate put that thought temporarily on hold. “Tell me about the night of the murder,” she said. “You were here the whole time alone. Is that the whole truth?”
“All of it. The irony is, Cynthia tried to persuade me to go with her to the party, which she thought might be better than most. I almost went, but I had papers to correct, and in the end I stayed home, thereby sacrificing my perfect alibi. Do you think the moral is: always accept invitations?”
“When did you last see Daphne?”
“I last saw them all the day before, at the meeting of the seminar. I think they had been told that I would give them a grade, and that attendance would count. The director was probably trying to help me, but that of course only increased their resentment, which increased mine. I don’t want to exaggerate, but at the same time you should know that this was the worst teaching experience I have ever had.”
“Were you shocked when that young man picked you out of the lineup?”
“At the time, yes, shocked and horrified. But soon after it all began to seem like a Kafka novel; I wasn’t guilty, but that didn’t matter. They would arrange it all so that I was condemned. And they had found my fingerprints on Daphne’s notebook; it was like mine, and I had picked it up by mistake at the last seminar. Daphne always sat next to me, I never knew why, but I supposed because from there, as I was at the head of the table, she could most readily turn her back to me and address her comrades. I had opened her notebook before I saw my mistake; I’ve no doubt I left my fingerprints all over it, But that also told against me. You might as well hear the worst. Before I was arrested, I would have told you that I was incapable of bludgeoning anyone to death. Now, I think I am quite capable of it.”
Some days later Kate summoned Leo to dinner, requesting that he bring along Beatrice’s lawyer; they met this time in an Italian restaurant: Kate’s tolerance for watching Leo consume raw fish had its limits. Sally had clearly come prepared for Kate’s admission that any defense would be quixotic, if not fatal.
“I’m not so sure,” Kate told her. “There’s nothing easy about this case. Beatrice’s reaction to this seminar was unquestionably excessive; on the other hand, had murder not occurred, she would probably have forgotten the whole thing by now. No doubt her words would seem extreme to anyone who had not labored long in the academic vineyards; I’ll only mention that when Beatrice took up teaching, she saw respect for the scholar as one of the perks of the job; she has, in addition, risked much and undergone considerable pain as an early feminist. To her, it seems as though all this has become less than nothing. Add that to what may well be a period of personal depression, and you have this reaction. Do we also have murder? I don’t think so, and for three reasons.
“First, I think the last thing Beatrice would do would be to go to that girl’s room under any pretense whatsoever; Beatrice claims never to have entered a dormitory and I believe her. I know, so far nothing counts that much with you”-Kate held up a cautioning hand to Sally-“but I have two other reasons, both of them, I think, persuasive. One, I purchased a cheap gray wig, donned some rather raggy clothes, and wandered into the dorm where Beatrice was supposedly spotted. I’m prepared to stand in a line and see if that young man or anyone else picks me out: to youth one gray-haired, frumpish woman looks very like another. Doffing my wig, donning my usual dress, I returned to the dormitory half an hour later; needless to say, no one recognized me. I was there this time to interview Daphne’s roommate, who was also in the seminar. She told me how close she and Daphne were-they even looked alike-and how devastated she was. She, it turned out, was writing on the homeless and had had almost as much difficulty in interviewing her subjects as had Daphne. Her animus against Beatrice was pronounced, but that was hardly surprising. I asked how her paper was going; she had gotten an extension under the circumstances, but had, in fact, found only one homeless woman to interview. She told me about her. No, don’t interrupt. Good pasta, isn’t it?
“I tried to find this homeless woman and failed, but I did get a description. I would suggest that when you find her, she and some others similarly dressed be put in the lineup with Beatrice to let that young man reconsider. No, that isn’t my clincher. Here’s my clincher.” Kate took a sip of wine and sat back for a moment.
“I noticed that Daphne had a MasterCard, an American Express card, and no VISA card. Now that’s perfectly possible, not all of us carry every card, but I was, as you know, grasping at straws, or at least thinnish reeds. Nudged by me, the police arranged to see every credit card bill that came in after Daphne’s death. That merely seemed like another crazy idea of the lady detective, until yesterday. The VISA bill came in yesterday. Here it is.” Kate passed it to Sally; Leo looked at it too. “See anything of interest?” Kate asked.
“Yes,” Sally said. “There’s a charge during the days when Beatrice was in Riker’s Island; two, in fact. But these charges aren’t always recorded on the day they’re charged.”
“Those from supermarkets are,” Kate said. “I’ve checked with this particular supermarket, which is in a shopping center near the college; Beatrice never goes there, since she lives in the city, but it’s also doubtful that Daphne did; she was, in any case, dead at the time of this charge.”
“Let me be sure I have this right,” Leo said, as Sally continued to stare at the bill. “You’re saying Daphne’s roommate’s homeless interviewee killed Daphne, tore up the pictures in anger, perhaps mistook Daphne for her roommate or was too full of rage to care, stole the cash and one credit card that she later used to buy food at a supermarket. The police will have to find her, that’s for sure.”
“I think if the police put their minds to it, they’ll find more evidence still. What you’ve got to do, Sally, after you’ve got the charges against Beatrice dismissed, is take up the defense of the homeless woman. I’ll pay the legal costs. Given one of those uppity girls questioning and patronizing her, and probably inviting her once or twice to their comfy dormitory room, I should think you’d get her a suspended sentence at the very least. Extreme provocation.”
“Please God she hasn’t got previous convictions,” Sally said.
“I doubt it,” Kate said. “It could well take an undergraduate to send even the most benign homeless person over the edge. The trouble with the police,” she added sanctimoniously, “is that they’ve never tried to teach a class without a text. One can do nothing without the proper equipment, as they should be the first to understand. I have urged Beatrice to write a calm letter to the director of women’s studies suggesting an entire revamping of the senior thesis seminar. They must require texts. Under the circumstances, it seems the least they can do.
“More wine?”
FAYE KELLERMAN’s series featuring Rina Lazarus and close friend Sergeant Peter Decker of the Los
Angeles Police Department, including The Ritual Bath, Sacred and Profane, Milk and Honey, and her latest, Day of Atonement, usually incorporate Judaic themes, and have attracted a large audience. A recent novel, The Quality of Mercy, is a work of gripping suspense set in Elizabethan times. Ms. Kellerman and her author husband live in Southern California.
DISCARDS
Faye Kellerman
Because he’d hung around long enough, Malibu Mike wasn’t considered a bum but a fixture. All of us locals had known him, had accustomed ourselves to his stale smell, his impromptu orations and wild hand gesticulations. Malibu preaching from his spot-a bus bench next to a garbage bin, perfect for foraging. With a man that weatherbeaten, it had been hard to assign him an age, but the police had estimated he’d been between seventy and ninety when he died-a decent stay on the planet.
Originally they’d thought Malibu had died from exposure. The winter has been a chilly one, a new arctic front eating through the god-awful myth that Southern California is bathed in continual sunshine. Winds churned the tides gray-green, charcoal clouds blanketed the shoreline. The night before last had been cruel. But Malibu had been protected under layers and layers of clothing-a barrier that kept his body insulated from the low of forty degrees,
Malibu had always dressed in layers even when the mercury grazed the hundred-degree mark. That fact was driven home when the obituary in the Malibu Crier announced his weight as 126. I’d always thought of him as chunky, but now I realized it had been the clothes.
I put down the newspaper and turned up the knob on my kerosene heater. Rubbing my hands together, I looked out the window of my trailer. Although it was gray, rain wasn’t part of the forecast and that was good. My roof was still pocked with leaks that I was planning to fix today. But then the phone rang. I didn’t recognize the woman’s voice on the other end, but she must have heard about me from someone I knew a long time ago. She asked for Detective Darling.
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