The Secret Lives of Dentists

by W. A. Winter

  Pullman and Hickok—Milt is back at work but inconvenienced by a cast and crutches—stop by the desk, where Robert tries to look engaged. Both men clap him on the shoulder.

  “You survived DeShields, kid,” says Hickok with a rare grin. “Not everyone can say that.”

  “Certainly not the chuckleheads who were on the stand before you—that smut peddler and that crazy cabbie,” Tommy adds. “I’m not sure I believe your story about why you were running around in the dark back there, but I don’t think you killed the girl.”

  “Me neither,” Milt says, swinging past him on his crutches. “You’re not the type.”

  Robert forces a smile.

  “Kind of you to say so,” he replies.

  When Mckenzie calls him, Robert is feeling slightly more relaxed about his situation. Amid the pervasive reek of tobacco and perspiration in the boss’s cubicle, he picks up a whiff of Meghan’s perfume, which almost makes him giddy. He is desperate for a woman, yet doesn’t have the vaguest idea who that woman might be now. He surprises himself by asking Miles if he still has a job.

  Mckenzie, who’s pawing through a pile of teletype dispatches, looks up.

  “You didn’t kill the girl, did you?” he says.

  Robert laughs.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Well, then you still work here. You just can’t cover the trial, is all. Until the proceedings wrap up, you’ll cover everything but.”

  An idea Robert has been toying with since the moment he took the stand bubbles to the surface.

  “Would you be interested in a sidebar?” he asks. “What it’s like to be a witness in a high-profile murder trial? ‘The View from the Witness Stand,’ we could call it.” And, like a hyperventilating tyro in one of those goofball movies about newspapers, he forms the headline with his hands.

  Mckenzie shakes his head and growls. “Aw, Jesus, Bob, you know I hate that first-person shit. We’re reporters here, not fucking diarists.”

  Robert reddens and hopes Hickok and Pullman didn’t hear his suggestion.

  “Just a thought,” he says.

  Mckenzie lights a Viceroy and goes back to his reading.

  “A bad one,” he says. “Now go pick up the damn phone and see if our new coroner, Dr. Alice Whatsisname, has the names from last night’s pile-up on the Belt Line.”

  Since his testimony and the county attorney’s subsequent threat of a perjury charge, the driver has been sleeping on a cot in the supply room at Canary Cab’s cinderblock headquarters and, come morning, cleaning himself up in the employees’ bathroom.

  “You’re lucky you got a roof over your head,” O’Shaughnessy has told him a half-dozen times in the past three days. “I hear you bitchin’ about the accommodations, you’re out on your ass.”

  If the driver didn’t have documentation that his brother-in-law has been skimming serious money from the firm and therefore from its downtown owners—reputedly associates of Bunny Augustine—he wouldn’t be here at all. He also knows, for the same reason, that his brother-in-law will never throw him out and will continue to assure Margaret Casserly, Fat Jack’s kid sister, that the driver has committed no crime against God or the state and that all everybody needs is a little time for “the whole goddamn thing to blow over.” Besides, O’Shaughnessy is down three drivers this summer, not counting vacation days, and can’t afford to lose another one right now.

  Watching the driver struggle to take a sponge bath in one of the men’s room’s cruddy wash basins, the big man says, “Maggie don’t sound like she wants you back anytime soon, Juice. Maybe what you gotta do is leave town for a while. Don’t you have a cousin in Alaska or someplace? Just do me a favor and wait until Crum and Knutsen are back here for good.”

  The driver knows what Margaret said—to her brother, to the neighbors, to the busybodies at Holy Name—after his testimony was quoted (and misquoted) in the Star and run alongside an eyes-closed photo that made him look like a mental patient. The headline read:

  CITY CABBIE—WITNESS OR SUSPECT?

  Lurid Testimony Raises Questions in Court

  He hasn’t spoken to Margaret directly, but has it on good authority—O’Shaughnessy and the driver’s own son, Benedict, the oldest of the Casserlys’ six kids—that he’s no longer welcome at home.

  “Mom had a guy from the hardware store change the locks,” Benedict told him on the phone. “Then she had some guys from Holy Name clean out the garage. They burned a lot of your stuff in the alley.” The boy hung up before the driver could say a word. Not that he knew what to say. After the police raid, he merely wonders what was left of his stash.

  A couple of the other drivers have asked how well he “really” knew Teresa Hickman, not sure if he should be treated as a local celebrity or the grouchy misanthrope they’ve always known. Because three-fourths of the Canary drivers have sketchy histories, no one is likely to give him much guff. If anything, his status among the other Canaries may have risen a notch with the “lurid testimony” headline. He hasn’t pulled a shift on the street yet, so who knows how fares will react when they realize who’s behind the wheel? The driver suspects that a typical fare—a typical male fare anyway—will have the same questions the other drivers have had, if more delicately phrased.

  In the closing arguments scheduled for next week, DeShields will no doubt tar him as a possible suspect, along with Bud Montgomery, the Zevos punk, that weasel Ybarra, and the skinny mystery man with the goggles. But two of them for sure and, who knows, maybe all four had sexual relations with Terry Hickman while all he did was lie. If the cops have anything more than his own foolish words, he’d be bunking in a jail cell right now instead of in the supply closet at the Canary Motel.

  The driver actually feels an unexpected sense of liberation. The wife and the kids, not to mention the house and yard, had gotten to be too much. He’ll be better off with a rented room where he can have his privacy and come and go as he pleases. Most of the time he spends in the car anyway, even when he’s not working, and, come dinnertime, he can sure as hell improve on the franks-and-beans, caterwauling kids, and his wife on his back for one damn thing or another. For his meals—he’s never been a big eater—he’ll find a spot like the Palace where some cute little number with a sweet ass and the top couple of buttons on her uniform undone serves him blueberry pie and tops off his coffee.

  He doesn’t worry about the possible perjury charge. They have to prove he was lying, don’t they? So how are they going to do that? And like the man says, he’s not on trial, the Jew dentist is.

  It will be a whole new experience to be noticed out in public. The picture in the paper didn’t do him any favors, but he imagines the likeness to be sufficient enough to spark some recognition. People will spot him reading the paper at a lunch counter and whisper, “That’s the guy that was friends with the Hickman broad. You can bet your ass he knows more than he’s let on.”

  He’s always believed, given his interests and habits, the old anonymity suited him, but maybe a little notoriety will be a plus. If their marriage is annulled, the wife is going to want money, of course—for raising the kids and cash for the mortgage and utilities—but he figures that O’Shaughnessy will be willing to share a little of his unearned Canary take, lest word of his skimming reaches Bunny Augustine’s pals. If worse comes to worst, the driver can take some of the extra shifts he’s been dodging to help make ends meet.

  The driver rinses his mouth, pulls on his undershirt, and squints at himself in the flyspecked mirror above the sink.

  “I’m free!” he says—but not so loud that the guy who just stepped out of the stall behind him would notice.

  On August 22, Fred MacMurray is laid to rest in Lakewood Cemetery, on a shady rise overlooking Lake Calhoun, surrounded by his wife of twenty-eight years, eleven children, relatives from back East (Dr. Fred grew up outside of Pittsburgh), and dozens of county and municipal employees who “did business” with the genial medical examiner over the past several year
s. Arne Anderson and Mel Curry are among the several police officers present, standing shoulder to shoulder in their dress blue uniforms, though Arne and Mel drove separately to the cemetery.

  Closing arguments in Rose’s trial begin when proceedings resume on the twenty-fourth.

  Scofield, apparently having used the break to polish his delivery, seems confident and fit—“bright-eyed and bushy-tailed,” George Appel will describe the young prosecutor in the next morning’s Tribune.

  “Your responsibility,” Scofield tells the jurors, who seem neither bright-eyed nor bushy-tailed after the better part of a month’s worth of testimony, argument, and delay, “is to right a terrible wrong. No, two terrible wrongs. Not only was Teresa Hickman murdered by the defendant, she has been defamed by the defendant’s counsel, who desperately wants you to believe that she practically begged for her own defilement and death.

  “The truth is, Mrs. Hickman was a well-mannered, well-liked, albeit rather naive child of rural America who, having decided to raise her family in the big city, was seduced and victimized by a series of brutal men, the last of whom, Herschel David Rose, strangled her when she threatened to raise her voice on her own behalf, and then dumped her lifeless body in the weeds beside a desolate trolley track. Compounding the outrage is the fact that Mrs. Hickman was raped and murdered by the very man she had turned to to relieve her physical pain. Imagine that, ladies and gentlemen. This poor young wife and mother believes she is in the hands of a healer, only to discover—too late—that the healer is a killer!”

  Scofield recounts Teresa Hickman’s arrival in the Twin Cities, her lodging arrangements with the Montgomerys, and her employment at the Palace Luncheonette. He describes her social life as “typical for a farm girl trying to make sense of the big city and not without an occasional error of judgment.” He moves on to her “trusted sister’s referral” of Dr. Rose, her “unfortunate interaction” with the dentist, and her “fatal, final appointment” on the night of April 8. He paints a graphic picture of the two of them arguing in his car about “their baby,” the dentist’s explosive rage, and his murderous attack—“wrapping those large, powerful hands around her slender, pale throat, then squeezing the last breath of life out of her helpless body!”

  Then Scofield startles everyone, including his tablemates, and sits down. His hands shake. He is sweating profusely and looks unnaturally pale. The prosecution will have the opportunity to rebut the defense’s close, but even DeShields seems taken aback by Scofield’s abrupt conclusion.

  Rose remains still as a statue. He hasn’t shown any emotion, hardly any physical movement at all, this morning. Miles Mckenzie will later write, “While his wife and brothers grimaced, exchanged horrified glances, and shook their heads during the prosecutor’s dramatic close, it’s not certain whether the defendant batted an eye.”

  This will change when, after a brief recess, DeShields rises and begins to speak. “Bright-eyed” would now be an understatement—the defense attorney’s eyes burn like hot coals. He rises slowly on his short legs as though he’s preparing to bound across the attorneys’ table and attack the prosecutors with his bare hands. The jurors, the audience in the gallery, and even the judge sit still in anticipation.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” he begins, facing the jurors, “there is only one wrong you are duty-bound to make right today, and that is the state’s vicious attempt to rip an innocent man from the embrace of his wife and family, to remove him from the profession for which he trained and constantly improved himself, and send him to prison for the rest of his life.

  “The state has not proved its case. It has resorted instead to the most outlandish attempt at character assassination that I have ever witnessed in a courtroom. Here’s the truth, ladies and gentlemen—Dr. H. David Rose is a good and honorable man. He is also a Jew, and a dentist, and because the detectives who investigated Mrs. Hickman’s murder are lazy and incompetent bigots, he became a convenient scapegoat in their shameless rush to condemn.”

  DeShields will continue, without so much as a sip of water or a glance at the papers in front of him, for nearly three hours.

  He paints a detailed portrait of his client, also a product of small-town America, a doctor’s son who earned college money selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door, a graduate of the University of Minnesota’s highly regarded dental college, a loved and honored family man and accomplished professional, with a loyal patient base and a long career untarnished by formal complaints. He has embraced innovative protocols and techniques to reduce his patients’ pain and fear, and, unusual among his colleagues in this part of the country, offered evening and weekend hours to better serve working men and women. He has even, when necessary after dark or during inclement weather, escorted his patients home following a procedure.

  “Did he have a sexual relationship with Teresa Hickman?

  “Mrs. Hickman said he did, that the baby she was carrying was his. But he says he didn’t have sexual relations with the woman, and there’s not a scintilla of evidence that he did. One thing for certain: that unborn baby was not her husband’s. Private Hickman was thousands of miles away in Europe and she was desperate to find a way to solve her predicament. She asked Dr. Rose—no doubt one of the few upright, honorable men, maybe the only upright, honorable man, she knew in Minneapolis—to help her. While Dr. Rose is a kindly man, ever willing to assist his patients when they need help, he is neither a fool nor a pushover.”

  Then DeShields recreates the “short, unhappy life of Teresa Kubicek Hickman,” who “was tired of the boring life and callow farm boys she grew up with and, like uncounted other young people seeking work and excitement, moved to the big city, where any number of men were only too glad to show her a good time. Terry Hickman was a very attractive young woman. By all accounts, she hungered for male attention and had a difficult time saying ‘no.’ Terry Hickman, sad to say, was a classic example of the textbook nymphomaniac, who, in her best friend’s words, drew men like flies.

  “Consider, for instance, the cab driver who was fixated on Terry, who made up stories about her, who lied on the stand about their relationship.

  “And what about the sinister figure seen lurking in the darkness where and when Terry was murdered—the tall, thin man with glasses? Who was that man, and what was he doing skulking about down there at that hour? If he was an innocent passerby, on his way home from work or an evening out with friends, why hasn’t he come forward? Why, whoever he is, haven’t the police been able to identify him and find out what he knows about the murder?”

  Yes, De Shields continues, for a while on the evening of April 8, Mrs. Hickman and Dr. Rose were together in his car, driving around the west side of town, discussing her predicament.

  “She made an unreasonable demand, and Dr. Rose reasonably turned her down. They argued, and maybe said things that each would want to take back if given the opportunity, and in this highly stressful situation Dr. Rose—weakened by lack of proper nutrition and a good night’s sleep—blacked out. What happened after that no living person—with the exception of Teresa Hickman’s killer—knows for sure.”

  After a brief pause, DeShields continues.

  “So here we are—eight o’clock the following morning. It’s gray and chilly, and the MPD’s detectives, members of the department’s crack Homicide Squad, are roused out of bed or taken away from their breakfast tables, and sent to investigate a young woman’s body found in the weeds alongside a trolley track. They glance around the crime scene with their blurry, uninterested eyes. But besides the young woman’s body, which is fully clothed and bearing no obvious marks of trauma, there is nothing to see. No blood, no evidence of a struggle, no murder weapon, no witnesses. The investigators take another cursory look around the site, chat briefly with the citizen who happened upon the body, and call it a day.

  “Detective Hessburg agreed that the police made, and I quote, ‘quick work’ of the crime scene. It was the weekend, after all, and the detectives had law
ns to rake and snow tires to replace, just like the rest of us. Whatever their priorities that dreary April morning, it wasn’t determining the murderer of this twenty-one-year-old wife and mother.”

  As it happened, the lawyer goes on, the “cursory investigation” required after news of Mrs. Hickman’s murder hit the papers quickly turned up a number of possible suspects—“men who preyed on young, naive, attractive women, who beat their wives, who offered employment in exchange for sex, who took compromising photographs of gullible girls, who leered and stalked and harassed and, in this case, quite possibly raped and murdered one such girl when the opportunity presented itself.”

  But, he says, shaking his large head sadly, “instead of investigating and pursuing those men, our sleepy gumshoes concentrate their limited energy on a middle-aged family man with no criminal record or history of bad behavior. A man who, if anything, showed Teresa Hickman no small measure of kindness since her arrival in town. But the police found Dr. Rose an irresistible target. He was a Jew, a member of that most despised of human races, and a dentist, a member of the most detested profession in America. Here was a Jewish dentist! Here was their man!”

  DeShields takes a deep breath and stares into the jury box, whose occupants now sit so still they might have been in a trance.

  “And who led the vendetta against Dr. Rose?” he says at last. “MPD Sergeant Arne Anderson.

  “We’ve learned a lot about Sergeant Anderson over the past several weeks. High school football player, war vet, married man, divorced man, longtime cop and investigator. But what we’ve also learned—from his own mouth as well as from his partner, who presumably knows him as well as anybody—is that he’s a lifelong anti-Semite, raised to think of Jews as Christ-killers, that he’s disreputable and dishonest, and quick to inflict bodily harm on a helpless suspect if he thinks that suspect deserves a beating. He has no Jewish colleagues, and his professional experience with Jews has to all intents and purposes been confined to a small group of North Minneapolis hoodlums.