Death on the River

by Diane Fanning

  “Are you kidding me?” Moscato said again, clearly shocked.

  “No.”

  “She said all this? Where’s she going now?”

  “Oh, she’s going to the bathroom.”

  “Okay,” Moscato said. “Maybe we should keep an eye on her.”

  When Angelika emerged from the facilities, she spoke to her friend Katie, who asked if she was okay. “I am,” Angelika said, indicating the investigators. “I’m just going to be coming with them for a bit.”

  At that point, putting Angelika in handcuffs would have been a by-the-book move. However, since they were riding a boat, there was the possibility that a problem could occur, and the last thing investigators wanted was for the woman in custody to drown because she was restrained.

  The uncuffed Angelika climbed willingly onto the state police boat. On the ride back, her anxiety seemed to have dissipated and her mood lifted. She threw a flower in the water in memory of Vince. She leaned into the wind and whistled a tune. “I’m free!” she shouted.

  Shortly after departure, the boat engine start sputtering. The scuba crew brought the boat to a halt in the middle of the river. They pulled out their tools and soon had the repairs done well enough to get them to the opposite shore. As they waited, Moscato held onto Angelika.

  “What’s the matter,” she asked, “you think I’m going to jump off?”

  “No,” Moscato said. “It’s just that I’m not that good of a swimmer myself.”

  “Don’t worry,” she told him. “I will save you.”

  Twenty-five minutes after they’d left Bannerman Island, they were back at Gully’s. Senior Investigator Moscato rode alone in his own vehicle. Angelika sat in the front passenger seat of Investigator DeQuarto’s car, with Detective DaSilva in the back seat. On the ride from the waterfront to state police headquarters, Angelika talked about how much better she felt after their conversation on the island. At the end of the fifteen-minute drive, she spotted a motorcycle in the parking lot and said she wanted to get on one and go riding. Then she turned to Detective DeQuarto and said, “I thought you were cute since the first time I met you.”

  The investigator was completely taken aback. He muttered a thank-you and entered the barracks with Angelika.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  At 3:20 that afternoon. Investigator DeQuarto swung the interview room door inward and Angelika stepped into a joyless, confining little space with no windows, scuffed white walls, boring gray carpet, a utilitarian table, and three padded but uncomfortable-looking chairs. Angelika was wearing a floor-length patterned skirt and a tank-top blouse, holding a bottle of water in one hand and a pair of white sandals in the other. DeQuarto followed after her, still in his jeans and T-shirt.

  She sat in the chair next to the side wall, beside the end of the table. DeQuarto took a chair at the opposite end, sitting perpendicular to Angelika. Their interaction began with a bit of idle chatter about yoga and going to the gym. A cold Angelika swung her legs up and down, rubbed her hands together, and blew hot breath on her fingers to warm herself in the chilly air-conditioned room.

  DeQuarto pulled out a card and read Angelika her Miranda Rights: “‘You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have a right to have a lawyer present while you’re being questioned. If you cannot afford to hire a lawyer, one will be appointed to represent you free of charge before any questioning if you wish. You can decide any time to exercise these rights and not answer any questions or make any statements.’ Do you understand that?”

  “I do,” Angelika said with a nod.

  “You understand all these rights I explained to you?”

  “Yes.”

  “We had a very good discussion,” he said.

  “We did.”

  “I think you felt better.”

  “Yes.”

  “I know you probably don’t want to run through this again, all right, but it’s just what we need to do.”

  Angelika nodded again.

  Unsure if her edginess had more to do with the cold or nerves, he tried to get her to relax. “This will be like therapy for you.”

  “Of course,” Angelika said.

  “Like I said, you’ll feel better.”

  “You will, too,” Angelika said with a smile.

  “Okay. I will. And you’re right. I definitely will,” DeQuarto agreed.

  “Can I get a little close?” Angelika asked.

  “Sure,” DeQuarto said. Angelika scooted her chair up toward him until their knees were about two feet apart.

  “Let’s start with your relationship with Vince,” the investigator began.

  “Hmm-mmm,” she mumbled, wrapping one arm around her waist.

  “So how long were you guys together?”

  “A year and seven months.”

  “How did you meet?” DeQuarto asked, leaning forward on the corner of the table with one arm, the other resting on his thigh.

  She told him about meeting Vince at Mahoney’s Irish Pub.

  “Were you guys living together right away or not?”

  “Pretty much, yeah.” When he asked for details, she estimated the date she’d moved in with Vince and gave the address of their condo.

  “From your point of view, how did you think your relationship was? Describe it to me.”

  “Just like any couple, we had our issues,” she said.

  “What issues would that be?”

  “Um, miscommunication.” Pressed to elaborate, Angelika said, “He pushed for everything. He pushed for sex—sexual stuff.”

  “Okay, he always wanted sex?”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you do sexual things?”

  “Well, yeah.”

  “Okay.”

  “He wanted threesomes, porn, everything.”

  “Okay.”

  “I just was not ready. In time, I might give it all to you, but I can’t right now.”

  “Did he ever force himself on you?”

  “Yeah.”

  “He does?”

  “Yeah.” But then she immediately contradicted herself. “There was no abuse.”

  “No?”

  “Mentally, it was rough,” she admitted.

  “Okay. And why was it rough?”

  “Because he pushed—he pushed.”

  “And you mean by pushing—you mean what you just described?”

  “Yeah, like special stuff. He demanded it every day, he wanted to do it on the weekend,” she said, brushing a strand of hair away from her face and behind her ear.

  “And you just plain were not ready?”

  “No.”

  “And you let him know that?”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Angelika acknowledged. “That’s why we fought.”

  “You fought a lot about that?”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “What did he say about it?”

  “He said I should want it.”

  “Did these fights actually get worse as the relationship went on?”

  Angelika said that he gave her a couple of slaps, grabbed her, and pushed her, but she claimed that she never hit him. They discussed the stress she felt from Vince’s sexual demand and how, although she made sure he knew about it, she tried not to express it in a negative manner. Part of her way of coping was to write it all in her diary.

  The investigator grabbed on to that tidbit. “Do you keep your diaries?”

  “Yeah, they’re in Russian.”

  “They’re in Russian? Do you keep those in your house—your apartment?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did he ever see them—he didn’t know Russian?”

  “He was studying Russian, actually,” Angelika said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah, we wanted our kids to speak Russian.”

  DeQuarto shifted back to the sexual conflicts and her anger over it. “What were you thinking inside as this was going on?” he asked her.

  She sighed a
nd cleared her throat before answering. She told him it made her feel ridiculous, rubbing her hands with increasing speed across the skirt covering her thighs. “I want to be with him and I love him, but he’s not letting me be myself.”

  “The way you want to be without any restrictions or anything like that?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Now, together, as far as [him] holding you back, does it mean you couldn’t be certain things, you couldn’t talk to certain people?” DeQuarto clarified.

  “Yeah, and wear this, and don’t do that.”

  “Did that make you angry as well?”

  “Yeah. I wanted to be away from him.”

  “Away from him?”

  “At times. I’ve written more,” she said, referring to her diary.

  “So why didn’t you just break up with him?” DeQuarto asked.

  “’Cause I loved him,” Angelika said. “I wanted to make it work. I wanted a kid. I wanted a family.” Angelika said, echoing the sentiment in singer Amy LaVere’s lyric: “Killing him didn’t make the love go away.”

  DeQuarto played along, saying that he could see that she loved Vince a lot.

  “I don’t think he loved me,” she said suddenly. “He always doubted me.”

  “Did he? How did he doubt you?”

  “He’d accuse me of cheating. He’d accuse me of lying. Lying and cheating.”

  “A lot?”

  “Not a lot. We had our great moments in our relationship.” But she continued to tell DeQuarto about Vince always being suspicious and picking on her.

  DeQuarto brought up Tina, Vince’s female coworker, probing for the signs of jealousy Angelika had hinted at on the island. Now, though, she insisted that Vince and Tina were just good friends. She claimed she got along with Tina but had expressed irritation to Vince for his always talking about her.

  The investigator then moved to questions about their last night together: the parties at Shadows on the Hudson and Schatzi’s Pub and the fight that followed. “What were your thoughts that night?” he asked.

  “Scattered,” she said, clutching her stomach and swinging her legs back and forth.

  When the questions turned to that fatal Sunday morning, she started rubbing her hands together vigorously. She told DeQuarto that Vincent had insisted on going kayaking, despite her objections about the roughness of the river.

  When she got into the car, Angelika said, “I had my life vest. I had my purse. Vinny didn’t take his life vest.”

  After briefly revisiting their activities on the island, DeQuarto directed her to the trip back.

  Angelika said that when they left the island on their kayaks, Vince was next to her, but then he pulled about fifteen feet ahead. “The way he was paddling was not good. I said, ‘No. You have to do it like this,’” she told DeQuarto, and slouched, rounding her back and resting her forearms on her thighs to imitate the proper posture.

  She continued, “We were just piloting, dealing with the wind and the waves, the current, the turbulence [as] the tide was changing. So he went to the right of me for a little bit, showing off, and he kept riding the waves vertically and that’s wrong because the kayak is small and very long.”

  “Okay,” the investigator said with a nod. “I know what you mean.”

  “And he was going on the wave and I’m like, ‘No, you’ve gotta turn it and you gotta ride in the waves.’ He said, ‘Okay. That’s right. Watch me! Watch me!’ I said, ‘You’re not doing it right.’ We were joking and he pulled … [in front] of me and said, ‘Baby, this is the adventure of a lifetime.’” Angelika paused. “I didn’t feel like that—that was when I started to realize that this was serious. I knew he had no cap on the kayak.”

  “The cap? You mean the plug?”

  “Yeah, the plug. I’m sorry,” Angelika clarified.

  “Where does the plug go on the kayak?” De Quarto asked.

  “It’s all the way in the back.”

  “Underneath it?”

  “No.”

  “No? Why don’t you draw it for me?” The investigator slid a piece of paper in front of her.

  Angelika sketched while she talked. “See, the kayak is long and there’s a dry compartment over here.”

  “Is the dry compartment in the back?”

  “Yes. The beer was in there—the beer and the water.”

  “Where does the plug go on the kayak?” DeQuarto asked, still finding it hard to believe that the plug was not on the bottom of the vessel.

  “It goes all the way to the back and it drains it.”

  “Like underneath it?”

  “No. It’s like when you’re putting it on a car, you pick up your kayak, drain it.”

  “Okay.” DeQuarto decided to move on. “So, he didn’t have that plug in there? Why didn’t he have that plug in there?”

  “He didn’t have it because I guess I had it.”

  “You took it out of the kayak at one point?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “When did you take it out of the kayak? That’s what we’ve got to get to, you know,” he told her.

  Angelika cleared her throat and pulled her knees in closer to her chest. “The kayaks were in the living room in winter—all winter, they were in there.” She added that the couple’s kitten had chewed on the plug and Angelika had removed it to stop her from destroying it, putting the plug in a desk drawer in the office area of their home.

  “Okay. When did you take that plug out? That’s what we have to get to. We need all that information. We’ve got a piece we’ve got to figure out, okay? As long as you’re being honest—”

  Angelika interrupted. “I am being honest. I’m trying to remember.”

  “Absolutely,” DeQuarto backtracked.”But we have to piece all these pieces together. We have to know if that’s an important part—”

  “Very,” Angelika interjected.

  “So, when did you remove … [the plug] from that kayak? Did you remove it at your house?” he asked, looking for a definitive date.

  “It was either at the house or in his car.”

  “That Sunday,” DeQuarto said, leaning forward again with a forearm resting on the corner of the table, “did you remove it from the house or from the car?”

  Angelika rested her chin on the palm of her hand to think. “No. It was before—way before.”

  The investigator kept pushing for specifics, and Angelika kept giving foggy answers. She said that if Vince’s kayak had been taking in any water on the way to the island or when they tried to go around the island to the beach she didn’t notice it and Vince didn’t mention it.

  “But you knew that plug wasn’t in there?”

  “From Plum Point, yes.”

  “From Plum Point, you knew it wasn’t in there?”

  “We were already in the water and I said, ‘Yeah, where’s your plug? Are you kidding me?’ I was mad at him.”

  DeQuarto asked her to go back to the moment of the accident.

  “He was in the water … the waves were doing their thing,” she said, making rough undulating movements with her arm, “up and down like that, and he’s going in and out of my vision. And then I saw that [the kayak] started to fill up and I knew that plug wasn’t there. I kept paddling and paddling and trying to get closer to him, but I couldn’t.”

  The investigator asked whether the kayak flipped or sunk, but Angelika said she wasn’t certain because her vision had been partially blocked by the turbulence in the water. She said it was possible a wave had flipped him. She’d seen him in the river holding on to his kayak, his dry bag, and the seat floatation cushion.

  Angelika sighed and sniffled deeply, becoming choked up. DeQuarto placed a hand on her forearm and gently said, “It’s all right. It’s all right.”

  After a moment, she continued, “And his paddle—I can’t remember if he handed to me or if I just pulled it.”

  “Why would he hand it to you if he needed to get back?”

  “Well, he wouldn’t need it
at that point,” she said, explaining that it was not possible for him to right his kayak in the water.

  “Did he hand it, or did you take it?”

  “He handed it,” she said, motioning outward with her arm. “And I took.” She pulled her arm back toward her.

  He reminded her that she’d previously said that the paddle was floating and asked her to focus.

  She sighed again, her shoulders raising and lowering. “I guess I took it.”

  “You took it from him?”

  “’Cause he was already losing it and it was floating over,” Angelika explained.

  “And what did you do with it?”

  “I put it on the side of my boat.”

  “And then what did you do?”

  She sketched the positioning of the boat and told DeQuarto how difficult it had been to secure the paddle, since it was missing a piece and coming apart.

  “When you say it was missing a piece, what do you mean?”

  Angelika sighed, as if frustrated with the investigator’s ignorance of kayak equipment. She picked up the pen to illustrate but stopped before drawing anything. “I knew it was missing a piece—a part.”

  “When you say missing a part, what do you mean?” DeQuarto asked again.

  After another exasperated sigh, she said, “The paddle that he had—every paddle—comes apart and there’s a little connector ring for security. He didn’t have that ring.”

  “Why didn’t he have that ring?”

  She blew out a forceful breath and leaned back in her chair. “He loaded the frigging paddle and he didn’t take it.”

  “What happened to that ring, then?”

  “I think it’s still in the truck,” Angelika mused.

  “Who took the ring off of there?”

  “I did,” she said, clasping her hands together and resting her forehead against them. She spent a moment collecting herself and then said, “He’s the guy who loaded and unloaded the truck.”

  But then Angelika contradicted herself, saying that she didn’t take the ring off. DeQuarto pressed her on it, and after a long pause she said that if the ring was in the back of the truck then Vince had removed it.

  “Did there come a time when you took that ring off at home?” he asked.

  She said that she remembered seeing it in the car and that the paddle could be used without it, but it’s not as safe. “He’s in the water,” she remembered. “I have both paddles and I get—I keep—and the waves keep pulling me away from him, further and further. That’s when he yelled, ‘Call ‘nine-one-one.’”