A Woman’s Eye

by Sara Paretsky

  To Kiernan he said, “There’s a great bar right here in Sky Harbor Airport, the Sky Lounge. Shall we have our drink there?”

  She nodded, her mouth suddenly too dry for speech.

  The plane bumped down, and in a moment the aisles were jammed with passengers ignoring the stewardess’s entreaty to stay in their seats. Siebert stood up and pulled his bag out of the overhead compartment and then lifted hers onto his empty seat. “I’ll get your crutches,” he said, as the elderly man across the aisle pushed his way out in front of him. Siebert shook his head. Picking up both suitcases, he maneuvered around the man and around the corner to the luggage compartment.

  Siebert had taken her suitcase. You don’t need to take both suitcases to pick up the crutches. Kiernan stared after him, her shoulders tensing, her hands clutching the armrests. Her throat was so constricted she could barely breathe. For an instant she shared the terror that must have paralyzed Melissa Jessup just before he stabbed her.

  “Jeff!” she called after him, a trace of panic evident in her voice. He didn’t answer her. Instead, she heard a great thump, then him muttering and the stewardess’s voice placating.

  The airplane door opened. The elderly man moved out into the aisle in front of Kiernan, motioning his wife to go ahead of him, then they moved slowly toward the door.

  Kiernan yanked the bandage off her foot, stepped into the aisle. “Excuse me,” she said to the couple. Pushing by them as Siebert had so wanted to do, she rounded the corner to the exit.

  The stewardess was lifting up a garment bag. Four more bags lay on the floor. So that was the thump she’d heard. A crutch was beside them.

  She half heard the stewardess’s entreaties to wait, her mutterings about the clumsy man. She looked out the door down onto the tarmac.

  Jeffrey Siebert and the suitcase were gone. In those few seconds he had raced down the metal steps and was disappearing into the terminal. By the time she could make it to the Sky Lounge he would be halfway to Show Low, or Sedona.

  Now she felt a different type of panic. This wasn’t in the plan. She couldn’t lose Siebert. She jumped over the bags, grabbed one crutch, hurried outside to the top of the stairs, and thrust the crutch across the hand rails behind her to make a seat. As the crutch slid down the railings, she kept her knees bent high into her chest to keep from landing and bucking forward onto her head. Instead the momentum propelled her on her feet, as it had in gymnastics. In those routines, she’d had to fight the momentum; now she went with it and ran, full-out.

  She ran through the corridor toward the main building, pushing past businessmen, between parents carrying children. Siebert would be running ahead. But no one would stop him, not in an airport. People run through airports all the time. Beside the metal detectors she saw a man in a tan jacket. Not him. By the luggage pickup another look-alike. She didn’t spot him till he was racing out the door to the parking lot.

  Siebert ran across the roadway. A van screeched to a halt. Before Kiernan could cross through the traffic, a hotel bus eased in front of her. She skirted behind it. She could sense a man following her now. But there was no time to deal with that. Siebert was halfway down the lane of cars. Bent low, she ran down the next lane, the hot dusty desert air drying her throat.

  By the time she came abreast of Siebert, he was in a light blue Chevy pickup backing out of the parking slot. He hit the gas, and, wheels squealing, drove off.

  She reached toward the truck with both arms. Siebert didn’t stop. She stood watching as Jeffrey Siebert drove off into the sunset.

  There was no one behind her as she sauntered into the terminal to the Sky Lounge. She ordered the two drinks Siebert had suggested, and when they came, she tapped “her” glass on “his” and took a drink for Melissa Jessup. Then she swallowed the rest of the drink in two gulps.

  By this time Jeff Siebert would be on the freeway. He’d be fighting to stay close to the speed limit, balancing his thief’s wariness of the highway patrol against his gnawing urge to force the lock on the suitcase. Jeffrey Siebert was an impatient man, a man who had nevertheless made himself wait nearly a year before leaving California. His stash of self-control would be virtually empty. But he would wait awhile before daring to stop. Then he’d jam a knife between the top and bottom of the suitcase, pry and twist it till the case fell open. He would find diamonds. More diamonds. Diamonds to take along while he picked up Melissa Jessup’s from the spot where he’d hidden them.

  She wished Melissa Jessup could see him when he compared the two collections and realized the new ones he’d stolen were fakes. She wished she herself could see his face when he realized that a woman on crutches had made it out of the plane in time to follow him to point out the blue pickup truck.

  Kiernan picked up “Jeff’s” glass and drank more slowly. How sweet it would be if Melissa could see that grin of his fade as the surveillance team surrounded him, drawn by the beepers concealed in those fake diamonds. He’d be clutching the evidence that would send him to jail. Just for life, not forever. As Melissa could have told him, only death and diamonds are forever.

  MARY WINGS’s amateur detective Emma Victor has solved two cases to date-She Came Too Late and She Came in a Flash, novels that have been published in England, Japan, Spain, Germany, and Holland as well as in the United States. After living in the Netherlands for seven years, Ms, Wings moved to San Francisco where she now works as a graphic designer.

  KILL THE MAN FOR ME

  Mary Wings

  “It was okay,” you said after the first time we’d made love. You said it very neutrally as if you’d been talking about the weather. Or snowflakes. Or cornflakes. “It was okay.” “Nobody’s ever told me that before,” I joked. You were lying next to me saying, “It’s no big deal. No big deal to say, ‘It’s okay.’”

  You leaned up on your elbow. I traced your collarbone with my eyes. You tried tracing my eyes with your eyes.

  “It’s our first time,” you said, “We need to learn some more things about each other.” Your voice was warm, instructive. Of course, you’d been in practice a long time. Or so they had said.

  “Sure!” I crowed. “Learn some more things. Discourse about intercourse! Sex as perception,” I burbled at you. “Sure!” But I also knew that you were telling me that we had a future. I laughed in the darkness. I would get what I wanted. And I would get you.

  Later I would tell you that when I made love with you, the memories of former lovers abandoned all claim upon my body. I told you I was free.

  We curled up together and fell asleep. The next day we would be stuck in gridlock traffic for three hours. On the way home.

  I joined in the sighs of relief when you spoke at public gatherings. You’d summarize, make the contradictions manageable. We’d been anxious. You’d satisfy us. One of them came to a lecture once. But it wasn’t a problem. You were attentive to me at these gatherings. You’d ruffle my hair. I was a portrait by your side. You’d let me know with the slightest of gestures at the end of a publicly spoken phrase that you were, in fact, only speaking to me. Of course, all you told anyone was what they wanted to hear. Pure pap.

  Except this morning when you said, after we’d come out of the shower, “Don’t you ever comb your hair?”

  And then I remembered, that’s what you used to tell them.

  You were laughing, “What did your parents ever do to you?” You were hardly exasperated at all. And I’d spilled the garbage bag on the floor for the third time that week. I was on the floor too.

  I was watching Jackson the terrier make pesto sauce paw prints the color of avocado. She was making them on the rug of desert tan. I was crying. And I was tan. We were all tan. We lived in Los Angeles.

  “What did your parents ever do to you?” you repeated. But you knew better than I did what my parents had done to me. You’d been my shrink. You’d been theirs too.

  You’d never thought about advertising. Not that I’d ever suggest it. But I’d asked Mr. Geramus, the neighbor
to the north of us, for tennis doubles. Then he asked you to join the agency. I knew he would.

  It was autumn and you said your soul had been searched. You said yes. But later you didn’t seem too happy to me.

  And the first time you did it you felt really bad. It was the loss of control. You were so devastated it was easy to want to comfort you. And eventually you let me.

  Later you didn’t even comment when I spent extra time at the mirror powdering my bruise.

  They had bought me oil-based foundation. It’s better because it doesn’t run with the sweat, they told me. And always follow up with matte powder.

  Then it was Christmastime and the agency had fired you right before having to give you your Christmas bonus. Your old shrink circle had laughed when you said you were going into advertising. Marketing, you’d called it. They’d envied your salary, and now they were triumphing over your unemployment.

  Yes, your old shrink circle had shrunk, but we were going to one of those parties anyway.

  Mrs. Watkin, the neighbor to the south of us, peered out her window as we walked down the driveway in our festive holiday attire. You always opened the door for me, and this time you had to. And we always wore our safety belts,

  We floated in with a liquor delivery. If I was very quiet it was because my arm hurt. But it was one more bond between us. It was our private story about how you’d lost control and I’d given it back to you by forgiving you.

  As the people floated by, faces talked about auto insurance, termites, weekend resort prices. Those subjects would latch on to other topics and become health care, roach motels, and freeway ramps. But you knew and I knew that you’d come damned close to breaking my arm last night. The throbbing and swelling of that arm filled up the whole room for me; the pain devoured hours of small talk generated by holiday anxieties and large quantities of hard liquor.

  And I knew that next time I’d make enough noise, near a south window, that the neighbor would call the cops.

  Patrol Officer Laura Deleuse:

  The call was a 418-DV on Del Mar Drive. Domestic violence. In a neighborhood that is usually just domestic.

  All assaults used to be lumped together as 418s, now we sort out the DVs. Makes it easier for the people at the university to study the statistics. These calls are never my favorites. The worst are the “hold me back” couples. When you arrive on the scene, they really go out of control. Because they know that now that you’re there, nothing really bad is going to happen.

  But, of course, this wasn’t the story with these folks. We pulled up to Malibu lighting, alarm systems, and bleached oak designer fencing. Of course, the husband with the big excuse opened the door. The sobbing wife would be in the background somewhere. This would take application of social skills. I thought I’d done all that on my dinner date last night.

  I explained that a neighbor phoned, complaining about noise. I asked him the usual questions: “What’s happened here?” “Has there been an accident?” “Is someone hurt?” (That scared him.)

  He mumbled some polite denials.

  “Who else is at home? Where’s your wife? May I see her, please?”

  He invited us in, opening the door too quickly, too widely, as if to say, “What do you think this is, a torture chamber?”

  What it was was a sea of chintz upholstery and a woman with a cut above her eye sinking into it. She had long hair and short legs. Her hair was pulled up in a complicated chignon (not a hair-pulling fight, apparently) and her feet were curled up underneath her. A fresh fire crackled on the grate of a marble fireplace.

  I squinted my eyes, looking at that cut, but when her husband glanced at her she turned her face away. The skin is so delicate there, I thought, if you get hit, your cheekbone can actually cause a tear in the skin. I looked over at my partner Kevin. His eyes were roaming the room; there were no weapons or anything that could be construed as a weapon lying around. But these days a fist is enough to cause corporal injury and can be regarded as a weapon in court.

  “What can I do for you?” she asked, and as I approached she uncurled her legs and bent over to poke at the fire, which was beginning to smolder. She fumbled with the iron, the only sign of nervousness.

  She was wearing stockings without a snag or run. She kept her face averted from me, although she had given me a good enough look when I’d first come in. But other than that she didn’t act like your usual humiliated upper-middle-class victim.

  What a difference from the scene I’d visited last week. Basically a couple trying to tear each other to shreds. The technique of separating them and defusing the fight wouldn’t be necessary here. When that couple made eye contact, it set them to spitting-spitting!-at each other.

  This woman, in her stocking feet, poking at the fire, with the husband nervously shifting his weight from side to side, was a different setup altogether. But the reason I was there was that phone call, and the cut above her eye. As in all these cases, I had to get her alone.

  “I’d like to ask you a few questions; could we speak privately?”

  She nodded and slipped on her black pumps, which were neatly paired by the skirt of the sofa. She led me down a hallway into a phony English library setup, with leather books and leather furniture. We settled into wing chairs, but I didn’t want to be too comfortable. I didn’t want her to be too comfortable either.

  “I assume there’s some sort of injury here.” I pointed with my pencil to the cut beneath her eye.

  “You assume correctly, I fell down the stairs.” Her tone was too measured, I thought; this woman was too smart not to know that that is the cliché. She was almost throwing it in my face.

  “I’ve never seen an eye cut like that from a fall down stairs, ma’am, A blow to the face is usually what causes this sort of thing.” I could hear irritation in my voice. “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure.”

  I sighed. What a waste of my time and the taxpayers’ money. And the laws have changed in California too. Used to be they’d have to press charges. Hire a lawyer. Still hubby would get out the same night. Now all we have to do is get her to admit that he hit her and we can cool his heels in jail, at least overnight, until he can get before a judge. But this woman wasn’t going to help herself out.

  “You sure about that? If you can just confirm that he hit you-that’s all you have to do-”

  “He didn’t.”

  “And the bruise on your arm?”

  She looked down and moved the skin on her upper arm around to see a purple spot. She looked surprised. She hadn’t noticed it. So maybe she just wasn’t even feeling pain.

  “Must have happened on the stairs.”

  “Looks a few days old.”

  She shrugged.

  I shrugged. “That’s all, I guess.”

  Later I thought, maybe if my social skills had been better I could have charmed the words out of her. But now I was getting hungry. Kevin and I were helping each other out with our diets. I wondered who would try and talk whom out of the late-night salad bar this time.

  We stood up and walked back into the living room. She had her head tilted up high, but not with the pride of the humiliated or the pain of a broken jaw, I liked the tilt of her head and something else, some strength I couldn’t place. Or maybe she was just crazy.

  I watched her eyes settle upon her husband as we walked into the room, and saw how much space she chose to put between them. She’s not afraid of him, I thought. Maybe she did fall down the stairs, It didn’t matter anymore.

  Kevin had a crush on the hamburger joint waitress with great repartee and I was dating a paramedic with awesome social skills. That’s the way it was with night work. Your society becomes waitresses at all-night restaurants, nurses, lap dancers, paramedics, and criminals. Couples with Malibu lighting were the exception.

  Kevin and I made our polite good-byes and went back to the car to call in and write up a report.

  “My feeling is, we won’t have to go back there again tonight.”


  “I’ve never seen a DV so calm after the storm.”

  “If everybody’s so copacetic, what can you do? I’ll bet that guy doesn’t ever have to be up before the judge.”

  But what I was thinking was, I hope he doesn’t cut her up into little tiny pieces either.

  We settled on hamburgers and drove to a neon-lighted, late-night part of town.

  They were right. Things got much easier after that. It became so simple to fuck up. I not only burned your shirts when I ironed them, I developed a cowering posture, lowering my eyes that darted only over to your shoe soles. And I knew that as things became worse for you, as the pressure started to mount, you’d beat me.

  But you were dependent upon me. I was the only thing you could control in your life. Or so you thought. You had no idea how out of control you really were!

  I went to several doctors, under assumed names, but I never wore sunglasses. I looked them straight in the face. And I introduced memorable topics with the receptionist at every appointment.

  Of course, I had to show some kind of escalation. But I wasn’t about to rent slasher films for your at-home video entertainment (besides, I was afraid the video places would have receipts). But I didn’t know how to time it. It was like taking a wishbone and pulling on it, hoping that it would break in the right place. The place that would be in my favor. And that’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to get broken anymore.

  But I didn’t know then how easy it would be, once I’d remembered what they’d told me.

  When I showed them the photos (probably not admissible in court, but nevertheless interesting), it was emotionally upsetting for them. To see the photos. The pictures traced bruises with bilious yellow centers that blossomed into purple and black. Or red welts, like bars across my back. It brought back memories that were not pleasant for them. And they expressed sympathy for me. They encouraged me to finish the work soon.