Presumed Innocent (55 page)

"And so the idea is there. Day after day. All the wife thinks about is killing the other woman. Whether she is in the peak of rage or the dungeons of self-pity, there is that thrilling notion.

"And, of course, as the idea takes hold, there is another twist. The husband must know. When she is raging, when she's on the way out the door, it is a kind of delicious vengeance to think of him bereft and knowing just who left him in that condition. And in her softer moods, when the thought is of somehow saving this marriage, she wants him to appreciate this monumental act of commitment and devotion, her effort at finding the miracle cure. It will have no meaning to him if he thinks it's just an accident.

"So that becomes part of the compulsion. To kill. And to let him know that she has done it. How is that to be accomplished? It is a magnificent puzzle to a woman capable of the most intricate levels of complex thought. Obviously she can't just tell him. For one thing, half the time she's planning to be gone. And, of course, on the basic level, there is a risk that — to put it mildly — her husband might not approve. He may go tattling. She has to take that option from him. And how best to do that? Fortunately, it is predictable that the husband will investigate this crime. The head of the Homicide Section has taken a powder. The acting head is a person no one trusts. And the husband is the P.A.'s favorite son. He will be the one collecting evidence, him and his pal, the all-star homicide dick Lipranzer. And as the husband proceeds, detail by detail, he will discover that the culprit for all the world appears to be him. He'll know of course that it was not. And he'll know who it was, because there is only one person in the world who has access to this glass, or to his seed. But he'll never convince anybody else of that. He will suffer in lonely silence when she leaves him. Or kiss her bloody hand with new devotion when she stays. In the act itself, there will be purification and discovery. With the other woman gone, she will be able to find just what it is she wants to do.

"But it must be a crime that the rest of the world can reasonably regard as unsolved, when hubby declares that to be the case. It must be a crime in which he alone will realize what has occurred. That's why she decides to make it look like a rape. And so the plan proceeds. Something that must be utilized is one of these glasses."

I show the tumbler I am wrapping to Lip. He is seated on one of the kitchen chairs now, listening with an open look that mediates between rough horror and a kind of wonder.

"It was a glass just like this one that her husband picked up and wept over, the night he told her of his affair. The self-centered sap sat there and devastated her with the truth and cried because their glasses were just like the other woman's. That will be the perfect calling card, the perfect way to tell him, You know who. He drinks a beer one night while he watches the ball game. She hides the glass away. Now she has his fingerprints.

"And then on a few mornings she saves the gooey mess that comes out when she removes her diaphragm. Puts it in a plastic bag, I figure, which probably sat a while in the basement freezer.

"And that's how it's done. April first. Ha ha. That's to help him get it. She makes a phone call from the residence an hour before the event. Hubby is at home, babysitting, but, as Nico would have argued if Stern had ever pointed out that Barbara might have been here when I made that call, you can use the phone in Barbara's study without being heard downstairs."

Lip's chair makes a sudden screech as it jerks back across the floor.

"Whoa," he says. "Run that by again. Who called? Really. Not what Delay was thinkin. Her?"

"Her," I say. "That time."

"That time?"

"That time. Not before."

"You before?"

"Me before."

"Hmm," says Lip, and his eyes dull as he reflects, no doubt, on that day in April when I asked him for what surely seemed a harmless favor, a trivial indiscretion, to skip retrieving my home tolls. "Hmm," he says again, and actually laughs out loud. I do not understand at first, but when I see his somewhat cheerful look I realize he is satisfied. We can only be who we can be. Detective Lipranzer is pleased to know that he was not completely wrong to judge me guilty of some margin of bad faith. "So she called that night?"

"Right."

"Knowin you'd done it before?"

"I'm not sure of that. She couldn't have overheard me, because there was nothing to hear. But if you want a guess, I think she knew. That was my sense. I probably left the phone directory from the P.A.'s office open to the page one time when I called Carolyn. That's the kind of thing Barbara would notice. You know how fixated she is with details, especially around the house. That may even have been what kicked her over the edge. But I don't know for sure. It could have been a coincidence. She had to get in touch with Carolyn somehow. She couldn't just show up."

"What'd she tell her on the phone?"

"Who knows? Something. Bullshit. She asked to drop by."

"And killed her dead," says Lip.

"And killed her dead," say I. "But not without a stop first at the U. She logged into the computer. Nobody ever checked, but I'll bet she loaded on some brainbusting program. I'd guarantee that machine was churning out paper for two hours. Every clever killer needs an alibi, and Barbara, you might say, had considered a detail or two. Then she drives over to Carolyn's, who by now is waiting for her to arrive. Carolyn lets her in. And when she turns her head, Barbara serenely bashes it in with a little item called a Whatchamacallit, which is just small enough to fit inside a lady's purse. Then she gets out the cord she's brought along and does some tying. Leaves the calling-card glass on the bar. And then takes a syringe and the knowledge gained from her readings in artificial insemination and injects the contents of her little Ziploc bag, full of male fluid. She unlocks the doors and windows before she leaves.

"Of course, criminal detection is a little more complicated than Barbara knew. There are entire fields of inquiry unknown to her. Like fiber analysis. She leaves traces she never counted on. The fibers from the carpets in her home, which are clinging to the hem of her skirt. Or a few hairs of her own. Remember how Hair and Fiber didn't bother with the female hair they picked up at the scene? I'm sure she never figured anybody was going to do so detailed an analysis of the sperm specimen. And I would bet that Barbara had no idea about MUD records, and was astonished when it turned out that her call was traced back to our phone. She drew more of an arrow toward herself than she intended. Same thing with that third fingerprint on the glass — probably a moment of carelessness. And of course none of us ever figured that Carolyn had tied her tubes.

"There's the rub, of course. Life, it seems, does not follow the invariable rules of mathematics. Things do not turn out as she had planned. Molto is shadowing the investigation. He picks up on everything she never meant to leave behind, and items like the fingerprints that she had probably figured I could shove under the rug. Things turn very dark for hubby. The world falls in around him. He seems completely fuddled. Maybe he doesn't even know who set him up. And now she finds herself in the one place she never counted on being: she feels sorry for him. He has suffered in ways she never intended, and in the cold light of reality, she is full of shame. She nurses him through his ordeal. She is ready at any moment to save him with the truth, until it fortunately proves unnecessary. But of course there are no happy endings. This story is a tragedy. Things are better now between the husband and the wife. Passion and feeling have been rediscovered. But now The Act stands between them. There are things he cannot say to her. Things she cannot say to him. And worst of all, she cannot stand her own guilt — or the recollection of her insanity."

When I am done, I look at Lip. And Lip looks at me. I ask him if he wants another beer.

"No, sir," he says. "I need whiskey." He stands up to wash his glass. Then he puts it in the box with the other eleven. He holds the box closed while I apply the tape.

I pour him his shot and he stands, drinking.

"When'd you figure all this out?" he asks.

"The big picture? I think I pick up pieces of it every day. There have been days, Lip, while Nat was at school when I've done nothing but sit in the dark and work over the details. Again and again."

"I mean, when did you know what happened?"

"When did I know she did Carolyn? It crossed my mind when I heard there was a phone call from here the night she was murdered. But I thought Tommy must have diddled the phone records. I didn't really know until I saw the glasses again in Carolyn's apartment and realized all of hers were there."

Lip makes a noise, a little too ironic to be called a groan.

"How'd that one make you feel?"

"Weird." I shake my head. "You know, I'd look at her. Here she is — cooking dinner for me. For Nat.
Touching
me, for Chrissake. Then, you know, it would all come clear to me: I was out of my fucking mind. I wouldn't believe it at all. For days, I wouldn't believe it. Sometimes I was positive that Tommy set me up. Making me think it was Barbara was part of his scam. I thought that a lot. I would have loved to hear Leon lay it all on Molto. But, you know, at the end, when I knew what it was, I wasn't surprised at all."

"Don't you wanna see her burn?"

I pout my lip. Slowly, I shake my head.

"I couldn't do it, Lip. I couldn't do it to Nat. We've all had more than enough.
I
couldn't take it. I don't owe anybody that much."

"And you don't worry about the kid? With her?"

"No," I say. "Not that. That's one thing I don't worry about. She's in better shape with him. It pulls her back. Barbara needs someone around who really cares about her. And Nat does. I always knew I couldn't split them up — it would be the worst thing I could do to either one of them."

"Least I don't gotta wonder why you threw her out." Lip makes that noise again. "Whew," he says.

I've sat down now in the kitchen chair Lip formerly occupied. I am thus in the middle of the room alone as I speak.

"I'll tell you something that will blow your mind: she's the one who took the powder. I didn't ask her to leave. I suppose six months from now I could have woken up and strangled her in her sleep. But I was willing to try it. I really wanted to try. Crazy as she is, wild and nuts, no matter how many times you turn it upside down, you still have to say she did it because of me. Certainly not out of love. But for it. I wouldn't call it even, but we'd have both had our share to make up for."

Lip laughs at that.

"Boy," he says. "You really got a way with the ladies."

"You think I'd have been out of my mind to stay with her?"

"You askin my opinion?"

"I seem to be."

"You're better off without her. You're givin her way too much credit. You're believin in a whole lot of accidents."

"How's that?"

"The way you're lookin at this whole thing."

"For instance?"

"Your prints. They're on the glass, right?"

"Right."

"And only you would know? You can't make an i.d. yourself. Gotta get the lab to do it. That means somebody else comes up with your name."

"Yeah, but I'm a big dummy. I was supposed to recognize the glass — not ask for prints."

"In a major murder case you ain't gonna ask for prints?"

I take a moment. "Maybe she didn't know they could make a laser match. My prints are there just to keep me from dropping a dime on her."

"Sure," says Lip. "And in the meantime the lab is lookin at the gism, figurin things out. And they got your carpet fibers."

"Nobody ties those things to me."

"What about your phone records, if somebody should think to look? You said yourself she probably knew you'd been usin this phone to call Carolyn. Why's she dial from here, while you're around the house? Why take that chance instead of goin to a pay phone? You don't think that lady knows from MUDs? Or fibers? Or whose prints are on file? After twelve years of listenin to your stories?" Lip chucks down the rest of his whiskey. "Champ, you don't got this figured right."

"No? What do you figure?"

"I figure she wanted Carolyn dead and you in the slammer for doin it. I'd say the only thing that happened that she never counted on was that you beat it. Maybe two things."

Lipranzer grabs one of the kitchen chairs and sits down astride it. We are now face to face.

"I bet she was world-class pissed when you ended up with this case. She'd have never guessed that on the front end. You're the chief deputy. You don't horse around these days with homicides. You don't have the time. You got a fuckin office to run while Horgan's tryin to save his butt. The only thing she'd know is Raymond would be tear-ass — he'd want to keep this thing in-house, right under his thumb. Anybody'd know Raymond would make damn certain the police assignment was Special Command. I think she figured that some smart homicide dick was gonna nail you. Somebody who'd look at too many doors and windows open, who'd get a report about what was in the wad and see it was all a setup — somebody who'd go lookin for a real bright guy who'd know just how to do it. That's what she was countin on — somebody who knows you real good. Somebody who goes with you to the Red Cross drive and knows your blood type. Maybe even knows you well enough to think you were keepin company with a certain dead lady. Knows what color carpet you got at home." Lip suddenly, and inappropriately, yawns as he looks out to the living room. "Yeah," he says, "when I come for you with the cuffs, that'd put the knife in pretty deep. That's what I figure."

Lipranzer eyes me sagely. Then he nods, convincing himself.

"That's possible," I say, after a moment. "I've thought of that. But she said things didn't go the way she'd expected."

"Meanin what?" he asks. "They didn't fry your ass? I mean, what else you gonna hear but hearts and flowers: Honey, I'da saved you if I had to. What would you do? Say, Go head and turn me in?"

"I don't know, Lip." I look at him, then I slug him softly in the shoulder. "Fifteen minutes ago you thought I was the one who killed her."