Follow the Money

by Fingers Murphy

  Ten minutes later she answered the phone and I introduced myself. She seemed neither surprised nor supportive, and maintained a controlled ambivalence toward my questions. She said, “I’m not sure what I can tell you that hasn’t already been told a hundred times.”

  Perhaps, but I wanted to hear her say it anyway. I scanned my list of questions. “Your parents split up for a time, about a year and a half before the incident.” It was a question I’d gotten from reading the newspaper articles. I felt funny saying ‘incident’, but I didn’t want to say ‘murder.’ I wasn’t sure what to say. “Do you recall that?”

  “Sure.” She answered like she was on autopilot.

  “Do you know what that breakup was about?”

  “Not really. They weren’t fighting or anything. Mom just left and went to New York. She spent about a month here with the family — with her family.”

  “Sure.” The distinction between her mother’s family and her father’s was clearly important to her.

  “And then they got back together. I don’t know what it was about. I was thirteen, I hated my parents anyway, so I never asked about it.”

  “So, at the time of the, murder, you hadn’t noticed any renewed animosity between them?” There, I’d said it — murder — but she didn’t seem to notice or care.

  “Not at all. They were busy like always. Dad had just gotten back from Alaska a few days before. He was just in town for the weekend before going back to Washington.”

  I struggled for another question and had to change the subject. “Ok, let’s talk about Matt Bishop. Was he a boyfriend of yours?” It was the first thing that came to mind.

  “Oh, God, no. Nothing like that.”

  “How did you know him?”

  “He was just a kid that was around.”

  “Y’mean just a neighborhood kid that you knew from where you lived?”

  “Right.”

  “My impression is that Matt did not belong to the same, shall we say, social strata as your family.”

  “Certainly not.”

  “But you still hung out with Matt and his friends.”

  “Not really, no. He was just one of those kids that was always around. He had a crush on me and he used to go out of his way to talk to me.”

  “And you invited him over to your house?”

  “I wouldn’t say that. If a group of kids came over, he might be in the group. But then he started just coming around.”

  “But you still used to let him in.”

  “Yeah. I regret it now, of course, but I was an awkward teenager. I mean, it’s easy as an adult to think you’d just tell the guy to fuck off, but when you’re fourteen or fifteen you don’t behave that way.”

  “I understand.” She seemed to be talking more. I kept my questions short and tried to let her ramble.

  She went on. “Truth be told, he seemed dangerous. So he was kind of exciting. Toward the end, it got kind of weird though. He started writing me notes and leaving them in my bag. They got kinda sexual, y’know.”

  “Did you have that kind of relationship with him?”

  “You mean sexual? God, no. I mean, he was the kind of guy you could be dirty around, so we would joke about stuff. He took it too far though, writing me really disturbing notes.”

  “Were they threatening?”

  “Not threatening so much as just really perverted.” She paused, thinking. “Well, I dunno, maybe in retrospect it was threatening. Like I said, I was just a kid.”

  “Do you have any of these letters?”

  “No, I threw them away as soon as I got them. I wish I hadn’t.”

  “How did your mom and Matt first start fighting?”

  “I think the first time it happened was when we were having some people over for dinner. Matt was at the house and wouldn’t leave. I remember Mom doing one of those things where she said, the guests will be here in two hours, your friend needs to go home now. You know, saying it to me while he’s sitting right there. Only Matt didn’t leave, she came by again and then told him to leave directly. He wouldn’t. It turned into this fight between them where she told him she would call the police if he didn’t leave immediately.”

  “And he left?”

  “Yeah, after she threatened him. Then Mom told me she didn’t want him around anymore.”

  “But he kept coming by.”

  “Yeah, I never told him outright that she said he couldn’t come over anymore. I mean I was fifteen, I didn’t want to have to say, ‘my mom says I can’t be your friend anymore,’ y’know what I’m saying?”

  “Sure.”

  “So he kept coming by when my folks weren’t there. Oh, another reason my mom didn’t like him was because he used to scare Shawn. He would chase him around, make him cry. Matt thought that was pretty funny.”

  “When did he do this?”

  “All the time.”

  I realized I was out of questions again. I sat there for a second, my brain racing to think about what I hadn’t covered yet.

  “Hello?”

  “Um, yes, I’m sorry, I was just making some notes. I, uh, wanted to ask you about why your father immediately suspected it was Matt.” It seemed like a stupid question.

  “Well, for all those reasons, I guess. Dad said that Matt called the house a bunch of times that day and Mom had gotten into a fight with him over the phone. I suppose that was probably why. Also, they never found the murder weapon. I mean, that alone is pretty strong evidence it was someone else. Not necessarily Matt, but someone.”

  I thought about the prosecutor’s argument. Claiming Steele had sat in the bathroom while his wife lay dead on the floor and washed the solid steel kitchen knife under the tub faucet. Then going calmly downstairs and putting it away. All before he called the police. The image of Steele rinsing the blood off the knife while his wife was dying on the floor made me shiver.

  It also made me say, “But people generally don’t kill people because of an argument over the phone.”

  “Most people aren’t Matt.”

  “Well, there must have been a little more to it than that.”

  “There were other things, but Dad didn’t know about them at the time. For one, Matt used to tell me about how he broke into houses in the neighborhood. He thought that was real cool.”

  “You mean he was a burglar?”

  “The impression I got was that he got a thrill out of going into houses when people weren’t there, that’s all.”

  “So you’re saying he may have broken into your house?”

  “I’m saying, well, maybe that’s what I’m suggesting, but there’s more to it. I lost my house keys about two months before. I always suspected that Matt might have taken them. I kept them in a zipper compartment in my school bag, so they wouldn’t have fallen out.”

  “Are you sure he took them?”

  “No. It was just a feeling I had. I know it sounds like bullshit, but the police found the side door to the garage ajar that night. They didn’t see tracks in the grass or anything, and no forced entry, so they didn’t say anything. It was only vaguely mentioned in the police report. But they did say they locked it back up to secure the crime scene. Anyway, two days later my grandpa went to the house with us to get clothes and personal stuff and he found the same door open again.”

  “I see. Did anyone ever check that door for fingerprints?”

  “I have no idea.” Her voice spoke in a series of descending tones. I got the impression she was exhausted by the whole subject. “The upsetting thing was that there were things missing from the house when we went back to get stuff. Personal things, you know, stuff of my mom’s.”

  “Like what?”

  “Well, she had some old boxes of family pictures that I wanted, and I couldn’t find them anywhere. She also kept an old cedar hope chest way in the back of her closet, and that was gone too.”

  “Did you ever find them?”

  “No. I even asked dad about them later and he had no idea what she’d
done with them.”

  “Maybe someone took them. I mean, afterward, if someone came into the house.”

  “We suspected that, but it just seemed too weird. I mean, it was all stuff she would have wanted and no burglar would have taken just that, you know what I mean?” She was silent for a second. “It’s too bad, I really would have liked those things. Especially the cedar chest and the pictures.”

  “So, your father suspected Matt right away, because of all of these different things, and he told you to find out where he was that night.”

  “Right.”

  “What did you do?”

  She let out a heavy sigh, the remnant of a deep and silent breath. “Well, I didn’t get any sleep that night. I waited as long as I could, until about seven or seven-thirty, and then called his house. When his sister answered, it was clear to me that she had no idea what had happened. I asked for Matt and she said he wasn’t there, that he hadn’t come home the night before.”

  “I see. Now you told your dad and his lawyer this?”

  “Yeah, I told the lawyer everything. I talked to him a bunch of times. I didn’t even testify at the trial.”

  “What?” The sharpness of my voice surprised me. “You mean you never took the stand?”

  “No. In fact, I was in New York during the trial. The lawyer told me to stay in New York. He said the prosecution would try to make me testify against my dad and try to get me to say my parents had a bad relationship and all that.”

  A chill ran through me. I rubbed the back of my neck and leaned back in my chair. Garrett Andersen had intentionally told a potentially key witness to flee the state to avoid helping the prosecution?

  “So he told you to make yourself unavailable to testify?” I couldn’t help but ask again, just to make sure I heard it right.

  “Oh yeah, we had a very specific talk about it. This was months before trial. I was going to be living with my mother’s family anyway; New York was naturally where I’d end up.”

  It sounded better the second time. She was moving anyway. That wasn’t exactly fleeing the state.

  “Anyway, I did end up telling the police about what Matt’s sister said. I don’t think they believed me. When Dad testified at trial, he wasn’t allowed to tell them about the conversation.”

  I thought about that for a second. Was it hearsay? Steele couldn’t repeat the contents of the conversation between Becky and Matt’s sister because it took place out of court? I didn’t remember the rules of evidence. Why was I so stupid? The line was silent and I wondered how long I’d been thinking. I had to focus. I tried to come up with something to say, but the conversation had lost its momentum.

  She could tell I was out of questions and she broke in. “Look, I know you’re just doing your job, but this should all be in the reports you have.”

  “Right. I don’t mean to keep you. I think that’s all I need for now.”

  “Okay.” She paused for just an instant. “Good luck.”

  I began to say goodbye when I realized she’d already hung up. I turned around to stare out the window and think about what she said when my eyes ran over the open boxes of the “file” spread out on the floor.

  In one of the boxes was Steele’s old day planner. After listening to Becky Steele describe how busy her parents were, I decided to flip through it and get a sense of what Steele’s life had once been like.

  It was strangely voyeuristic, a glimpse into the daily routine of a wealthy and powerful man. Yet the entries were often cryptic, filled with abbreviated names and other shorthand that made it difficult to figure out exactly what the appointments were. For example, the last meeting he had during his trip to Alaska, just before the murder, read: 3 P.M., Fairbanks Hotel, Gary R.

  Not particularly helpful.

  5

  I hadn’t seen my family in more than a month, and I wouldn’t get paid for another week. Since I had been eating on credit and my bank account was hovering just above zero, I figured I could spend the weekend at home, sponge meals off the folks, and try not to think about Steele or the direction my life was headed.

  Traffic on the sixty freeway wasn’t bad, and I made good time on my way to Riverside. The air grew warmer as I drove east, away from the ocean and into the desert. Although the smog grew thicker, I kept the windows down and hummed along with the classic rock station as it blasted Eagles and Steve Miller songs from my small, static-filled factory speakers. It was the first time in days I had not been occupied by work, by Steele and prisons and accusations and lies and police reports and murder.

  I got off the freeway where I always did and cruised along the street of dilapidated strip malls where I’d spent my teenage years. Then I turned left, off the busy street and down into the neighborhood. The homes were built mostly in the 50s and early 60s as the post-war generation moved east looking for affordable real estate.

  My grandparents came west in the 1940s because the army plucked my grandfather from his home town in Wisconsin and replanted him in Los Angeles where he worked as a military supply liaison to an airplane manufacturer. He was glad to avoid going overseas and, when the war ended, he stayed. Having grown accustomed to the sun, he was not eager to return to the hard Wisconsin winters. Jobs were plentiful in post-war LA and my grandfather lived first in a small apartment in Studio City with a courtyard where he and his neighbors barbecued chicken and drank gin and tonics on balmy LA evenings.

  Then, once the freeways were built, he bought a home just east of Altadena in the first generation of affordable suburbs made accessible by car. It was the 1950s and everyone had a job, bought a home, had children, sat in an easy chair and read the paper in the evening — back when there were still evening papers — and spent quiet moments marveling to themselves about how wonderful the entire world seemed to be.

  Twenty years later, my father was in search of the same life. He found himself a regular job, lived in a massive apartment complex further out in Covina with a centralized swimming pool and neighbors who never spoke to one another, and struggled to save enough to buy a home in an economy where housing prices escalated faster than any normal man could save. Eventually my father moved even further east, to Riverside, to a neighborhood a regular workingman could afford.

  Life was still pretty good. There were lemon trees in a backyard large enough to raise four kids, and the streets were mostly cul de sacs. I knew all the kids on the block and my parents knew all the other parents. There were still backyard barbecues, but the parents drank beer, spent Sunday mornings working on the car or watching football, and spent their quiet moments worrying about paying their property taxes and whether they’d ever be able to retire.

  And out of that I had managed to have what I remembered as a good childhood. I knew all of the kids for blocks around. I managed to stay out of trouble when my other latchkey friends started raiding their parents’ liquor cabinets and smoking weed behind the 7-11. Landed a scholarship to Pomona. Worked with my dad in the summers — during the biggest housing boom in the country’s history — and opted for a partial scholarship to UCLA Law School over paying full freight at Stanford. Landing the job at K&C had been the next logical step in a long road of hard work and good luck. And now I found myself thinking more and more about reversing the downward trajectory of my family’s fortunes.

  I turned into the driveway and saw my little brother, Ben, and a kid I didn’t recognize, running around in the yard with sticks in their hands playing the kind of game nine year olds play when they’re running with sticks. Ben waved but didn’t miss a beat; the game was getting serious. Gory fake death was imminent.

  I strolled into the house. It smelled like home always did, the way that no one else’s house ever smelled. I could hear my mother in the kitchen. I could hear a TV on somewhere in the house.

  My mom poked her head around the kitchen wall and smiled, rushing to me with her arms splayed wide from her middle aged, pear-shaped body. She wore khaki pants and a blue, short-sleeved blouse. It was a
variation on her standard outfit. I thought I noticed more gray in her hair than the last time I was home.

  I followed her into the kitchen, sat on a stool, and we made our way through the routine subjects we covered every month when I came home. She moved around the kitchen, fluidly, effortlessly, straightening things, moving piles of papers near the telephone, opening and closing cupboards, putting dishes away, getting dishes out, and talking all the while. I moved from side to side on the stool, my feet up off the floor, resisting the urge to try to spin the seat all the way around.

  The sliding glass door opened behind us and my father’s voice filled the room. “Heeeeeeeeey, counselor.” I turned to see him walking toward me with his arms out. I stood. “How’s the big time lawyering going?”

  “Ah, you know, it keeps the lights on.”

  The old man chuckled and patted me on the shoulder, then went to the fridge and peeked inside, looking for something but finding nothing. My mother told him to wash his hands. He stood and looked at them, turning from palm to knuckles, seeing the grease and dirt, and then went to the sink with a smile on his face.

  “Yes dear.” He winked at me. Then he asked, “So what’ve they got you doing over there? What kind of law do they do, anyway?” It was a typical question, despite its having been asked and answered a hundred times.

  “They do all kinds of things. They’re a corporate firm, mostly. You know, representing big companies and stuff.” I heard myself say ‘stuff’ and felt like a child. “A lot of mergers and IPOs and then, all of the other things that big companies need — tax, employment, litigation, everything pretty much.”

  Both of my parents gave me that look I was getting used to seeing. They stared back as though nothing I’d just said meant anything to them. “So you’re going to court?” my mother finally asked, in a tone that assumed that was in fact what I was doing.

  “Well, I can’t go because I’m not licensed yet, but yeah, sure, they have litigators. But a lot of their lawyers never go to court, they’re deal lawyers, they do transactions and stuff.” There I was with ‘stuff’ again. I tried to imagine how Jim Carver would describe the firm.