Marriage Is Murder

by Nancy Pickard

  “But that’s—”

  “Different? Men are violent, Cain. Period.”

  I wasn’t going to win this one, so I stopped trying. I didn’t want to leave any more animosity between us than there usually was, however, so I tried for a moment’s bland conversation.

  “Okay.” I smiled at her. “I bow to your greater experience. Although I don’t know what it is. What did you do before you came here, Smithy?”

  “I was in school,” she said, calmer now that she’d won. “Getting my degree in social work. And I was working part-time at a shelter.”

  “Where?”

  “Boston.”

  “That’s where you’re from, Smithy?”

  “Yeah.” She shrugged, then said, as if admitting to something that embarrassed her, “Back Bay.”

  It didn’t surprise me; Smithy so determinedly cultivated a working-class image that it practically had to hide middle- or upper-class origins. “Your family still there?”

  Her head snapped around, and she glared at me as if my bland question had mortally insulted her. “What is this, amateur psychology hour? You’re a great one to talk about crazy parents, Cain.”

  “Huh? Where did that come from? What the hell is that supposed to mean, Smithy?” Actually, I knew exactly what it was supposed to mean, and I was furious. “Listen, my father never abused my mother,” I said hotly, wishing I didn’t sound so defensive. Even as I defended him, I thought: it was true, he’d never hit her, only neglected and deserted her. Only. But no, I couldn’t stand to think of him as abusive, only selfish and unaware as a child might be.

  Tears sprang to her eyes. “Lucky you.”

  The argument was over. She closed the door between us.

  I stared at the door for a few moments, feeling as if I’d just stepped in from a sudden violent squall. Jesus, the woman was touchy! But then I felt myself smiling at the door. Look who’s talking. I breathed deeply a couple of times and turned around.

  The place was dim and silent, the curtains drawn.

  I suddenly felt claustrophobic and wanted back out again. It was hard to breathe in the air that seemed thick with tears, fear, unhappiness, and anger. When I found Eleanor Hanks sitting with her hands folded in her lap in the living room, I suggested we go someplace else to talk.

  “Where?” she asked, as if, having lived there for a few days, she was now bewildered and a little terrified by the idea of a world outside of Sunrise House.

  “What’s in the backyard?”

  “A sandbox.” She looked doubtful. “Swings.”

  “That’ll do.” I coaxed her into getting her coat from upstairs, then led her to the back door, where I had to unhook a chain, draw a bolt, and turn a key in a lock in order to go outside. The security around this place was no small inconvenience and no joke. “Wait,” she said softly, and left me standing alone in the kitchen. In a moment she was back with another woman who locked the door behind us.

  “They get really upset if somebody leaves a door open, even back here,” Eleanor explained. “We can knock when we want somebody to let us in.”

  We walked down the steps, but not into the airy, open space I craved. The backyard was like another locked room. True, this one had sky for a ceiling and grass for a rug. But it was surrounded by an eight-foot fence that was constructed of pointed, wooden slats that were nailed tightly together so that nobody could see in. Or out. The only view was up at the chilly blue sky. There were two gates, both strongly barred. It only lacked a moat to complete the feeling of being in a fortress.

  Still, it was better than staying in the house.

  “Let’s sit there,” I said, and pointed to a children’s playground set. It was metal, painted white with red stripes, with a slide, rings, and one of those swings with facing benches. We climbed awkwardly into the double swing and sat down on opposite sides, our hands wrapped around the metal supports, our thighs touching. My knees rubbed the front of the bench where she sat. She was shorter; her knees didn’t touch the metal. I pressed the toe of my right shoe to the ground and pushed, to start us swinging.

  She had been glancing at me and looking increasingly upset.

  “I remember you.” She moved her leg away from mine so they no longer touched. Her face looked pinched, and she seemed to shrink into her thin coat, as if she were cold. “You were here with those detectives. You’re a policewoman, aren’t you?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  But she still had a suspicious, betrayed look in her eyes.

  “Smithy will tell you,” I assured her. I hated to admit it, but Smithy was right—I should have gone through channels to get to this frightened woman. “She and I are both members of a task force that is looking into the problem of family violence in Port Frederick. We’d like to find ways to help other families avoid some of the troubles you’ve had, Mrs. Hanks.” She didn’t suggest that I call her Eleanor. I could hear myself going stiff and awkward in the face of her dismay. “I thought that one of the best ways to start was to talk to women who’ve been there, in violent family situations, that is.” She was frowning now, as if she were trying to understand what I was saying, but at the same time she was shaking her head vigorously, as if she were going to refuse to answer me. I figured it was my own fault that I’d lost her, and I braced myself to be turned down. Sounding more like a bureaucrat every second, I said, “I don’t want to intrude on your privacy. But if you’re willing to discuss it with me, I’d like to ask you what you think might be some of the causes of family violence, and what you think our community might do to help prevent—”

  “But it wasn’t like that!” She made fists of her hands, and beat them on her lap. My foot slipped off the slats and struck the ground, causing the swing to jerk us. “I don’t know why nobody ever believes me, but it wasn’t like that at all! Dick was a wonderful husband, really he was, and he never hit me, not once! My goodness, that would have been mortifying to him, in his position. Oh, we had our arguments, like any married couple, but it was never like that, never! I feel embarrassed even to be here. . . .” She glanced at Sunrise House. “I wish somebody would believe me! I didn’t kill him!”

  “Mrs. Hanks, I don’t think we ought to talk about—”

  “I loved him! I wouldn’t ever hurt him, any more than he’d ever hurt me! I don’t understand why nobody believes me!”

  How would Tommy Nichol handle this? I wondered.

  “But Mrs. Hanks,” I said, “weren’t the police called to your home?”

  She looked back toward the house. “Why, no.”

  “A couple of times this year, the neighbors called...”

  “Oh, but that was a mistake.” She stared at the empty half of the swing beside me. “The kids had the TV turned up real loud, and there was a movie on where a man and woman were shouting at each other, that’s what the neighbors heard, it was all a mistake. We were so embarrassed, this whole thing is so mortifying, I could just die.”

  “Twice?”

  “What?” She looked at me, then back at the house.

  “The neighbors made the same mistake twice?”

  “Yes, well, I don’t know if it was the TV the second time, I don’t remember exactly, but it was definitely all a mistake. Dick would tell you that, too.” At the mention of her husband’s name, she bit her lip and squinted as if to hold back tears. “He was a wonderful husband, we had a wonderful life together, and now. . .”

  She bent her face into her hands and began to cry.

  “I’m sorry.” I wanted to ask her why, if it was such a great marriage, they had been interview subjects for the Ingrams, and why she had gone to the social welfare office to ask about assistance. But she was already down, and I couldn’t bring myself to kick her again. “Do you want to go back in the house, Mrs. Hanks?”

  She raised her face and stared at me, the tears streaming.

  “I want to go back in time,” she whispered. “Please, I just want to go back in time, and make it all go away.”r />
  In a few minutes, when she would allow me, I knocked on the door and guided her into Sunrise House. I handed her over to Smithy, who gave me a furious stare in return.

  “You and Bushfield make a great pair, Cain,” she said.

  I didn’t feel like arguing with her anymore.

  On my way back to the office, I decided to stop by the single room that Dr. Henry and Kathy Ingram rented for their research. After parking on the street, I let myself in through the side door of the old, two-story brick building, climbed the dirty stairway, and knocked on the frosted-glass pane in the center of their unmarked, locked door. It didn’t, as the Ingrams had commented on their application to the Foundation for funding, take much money to open research headquarters. It did require a fair amount to run their computer and buy their time. There were lights on within, so I knew somebody was there, because the Ingrams were sticklers for turning out lights and turning down heat, but for a few minutes, nobody answered my knock. If I knew Henry, he was in there, all right, keeping quiet, shushing Kathy, hoping the unexpected visitor would give up and go away. I knocked louder.

  “Kathy? Henry?”

  “What?” came a bad-tempered bellow from within.

  “Jennifer Cain,” I yelled back.

  There was another long silence, then a voice said, “Hell’s bells.” Heavy footsteps approached the door, a bolt turned, and the door opened to reveal Henry in blue jeans and a black turtleneck sweater. He looked younger than his seventy-four years, but no more convivial than usual.

  “Hello. We’re busy.” Henry turned around and plodded back to his desk, but he left the door open. I stepped into their office, which looked as clean, efficient, and modem as the rest of the building looked old, filthy, and messy. Henry, who was not entirely without courtesy, muttered loudly, “Come in.”

  “Hi, Henry, sorry to bother you. Where’s Kathy?” I was hoping he would say she had just stepped out to pick up their usual working lunch from the nearby deli. But no such luck.

  “Conducting interviews,” he snapped. He began punching his long, meaty fingers onto the keyboard of one of his IBM computers, working busily as if I weren’t there.

  I was, by that time, becoming heartily tired—an interesting oxymoron—of rude people; it would have been a pleasure to see Kathy’s warm, sweet smile, to be the recipient of her formal courtesy, to deal with her instead of him. The small room was nauseatingly full of his cigar smoke, which he was continuing to puff out at a rate approximating that of a good-size steam engine. I was going to have to make this a quick visit, or risk throwing up into their photocopying machine.

  “Henry!” I said sharply.

  He turned around then, peering at me through a thundercloud of black smoke. I moved fast, pulling up a chair beside him, and starting to talk rapidly—not so much to keep his attention as to get out of there as soon as possible.

  “This won’t take long, Henry,” I promised. “I’ve just been to see Eleanor Hanks, who claims she didn’t kill her husband. She claims they didn’t argue, didn’t fight, that Mr. Hanks never beat her up. And she’s very convincing, Henry. But what I wonder is, if that’s true, why did you and Kathy interview the Hankses?”

  He pursed his lips around the cigar and narrowed his eyes at me. Finally, about the time I thought I might pass out from oxygen depletion, he removed the cigar and stubbed it out in an ashtray on his desk. I would have breathed deeply with relief, but in that air, the act might have killed me.

  “Can’t tell you that,” Henry said, mildly enough.

  “Because it’s confidential, I suppose?”

  “Of course it is.” He nodded. “What kind of scientists would we be if we told all the dirty little secrets our subjects tell us? It would not only be unprofessional, it would be unethical, immoral, and inhumane.”

  “Well, let me put it this way—”

  “There is no way you can put it, Jennifer, that would loosen my tongue,” he said sternly, but not unpleasantly. “And don’t go jumping to the conclusion that because we interviewed them, it must logically follow that theirs was a violent marriage.”

  “But why would you interview them unless—”

  “You’ve heard of control groups.” It was a flat statement, not a question, and it gave me hope for Eleanor. Of course I’d heard of control groups.

  “You mean you also interview nonviolent families, to contrast their behavior and attitudes with the violent ones?” He nodded, but the fingers of his right hand were beginning to tap impatiently on his desk. I was afraid that any minute they’d move toward the ashtray and matches. “So you’re saying that you might have interviewed the Hankses as part of one of your control groups?”

  He grabbed the cold, stubby cigar and just before sticking it back in his mouth, said, “No, I am not saying that. I told you, I’m not saying anything.”

  “You are a very difficult man, Henry,” I informed him.

  He grinned around his cigar as he lit it.

  “But apparently Kathy loves you,” I conceded, getting up and backing rapidly away from him, “so you must have some redeeming features.”

  It amused him, as I knew it would. When I looked back at him just before I shut the door behind me, he was still smiling around his cigar.

  I drove back to work then, feeling utterly confused and wondering how Geof ever solved anything, given that all he had to work with were unpredictable human beings! Besides, Eleanor Hanks and the good doctor had just shot to hell what little was left of my original fantasy of her husband’s murder.

  Or maybe they hadn’t.

  12

  “SHE’S LYING, JENNY.”

  I met Geof for dinner that night. The restaurant, a chrome-and-linoleum joint named Johnnie’s that seemed to change owners and names every three months, had the sole distinction of being close to the police station. It was also quick and cheap, although judging by the thickness of my pork tenderloin sandwich, not nearly cheap enough.

  Geof’s collar was open and his tie was undone, presenting to my view a triangle of skin and collarbone that I had kissed many times under many different circumstances. I was tempted even at that moment, but there was a table of greasy food between us.

  “We were called to the house twice.” He paused to wipe mayonnaise off his mouth. “I’m positive he’d beaten her both times. Now I’ll grant you, there wasn’t any blood, and she wasn’t bruised anywhere I could see. And they both denied it. But I’ll swear she moved as if she hurt, and she was afraid of him. That woman was scared to death the entire time we were there, both times.”

  “Most people are nervous when cops come to call.” I spouted his own wisdom back at him. “Even innocent people. Maybe she was scared for their reputation, how it would look to the neighbors.”

  He gave me a look over his cheeseburger.

  “But you didn’t see any proof that he hit her,” I pointed out.

  “Jenny, there are so many ways to hit a person where it doesn’t show.”

  “I know that.” I took a bite of my dinner, swallowed. When I didn’t taste meat, I lifted a comer of the soggy bun to see if there really was any protein hiding there. Yes, there were two thin slices of dill pickle, a bit of onion, and just enough breaded pork to see with the naked eye. “But Geof . . .”

  He pointed a French fry at me. “He’d been trained in security, remember, so he may have known how to punch her to produce maximum pain, minimum display.”

  I put my sandwich back down on my plate. Every now and then I was brought up short by the cold, dark side of the reality of his occupation.

  “I suppose you know how to do that, too.”

  He nodded, his mouth full.

  I let it go. “But you couldn’t swear he hit her.”

  He smiled slightly, shook his head. “Jenny, it’s called denial. What she’s doing, it’s called denial.”

  “Yes,” I conceded, “I suppose it is.”

  “Although, I’ll admit she’s pretty convincing.”

>   “Why, thank you.” I laughed, and took up my tenderloin again. “So I’m not the only one who tends to believe her when she says she didn’t do it.”

  “I didn’t say I believe her, Jenny. But I will say that a lot of women lie about whether or not the old man beats them up, but that doesn’t make them killers. Anyway, she hasn’t confessed yet. That’s suggestive. I know you won’t like this, but most housewives are a snap to break down—they’ll tell us the truth if we look at them cross-eyed.”

  “Oh, you chauvinistic cops are all alike.” An image flitted through my mind: a line of tough-looking cops, arms akimbo, staring cross-eyed at a trembling housewife. “Besides, she manages that fast-food joint—or used to, anyway—so she isn’t ‘just’ a housewife. She might be tougher than you think she is. I’ve known some housewives who were tougher than beef jerky.”

  He smiled slightly. “You should have been a lawyer-you’ll take any side of an argument. The point is, hell, if she didn’t kill him, maybe she’s telling the truth about the other times. Maybe he never hit her, maybe the kids really did have the TV turned up too loud.”

  “The Ingrams used Eleanor and Dick as subjects for their research into domestic violence.”

  He looked interested. “I didn’t know that.”

  “I asked Henry about it today, but he wouldn’t tell me if that means they had a violent marriage; it might only mean they were part of a control group. But I do have this for you.”

  I thrust some stapled papers I had brought with me toward him. He took them, looking first quizzical, then appreciative. “How’d you get this, Jenny?”

  It was a sample of the questionnaire the Ingrams used to interview their subjects. “I remembered it was part of their grant application, that’s all.”

  He scanned the questions, running down them with his right forefinger, reading a few aloud: “Frequency of arguments. Intensity of arguments. Causes of arguments. Episodes of physical violence, other than sexual. Episodes of rape, and other forcible sexual acts. Duration of violence. Has either partner ever pulled a gun against the other partner, or a knife? Damage resulting from violence. Medical records. How much he earns, how much she earns, how often they get a baby-sitter and go out together, activities independent of each other, attitudes, hobbies, church affiliations, other interests outside the home, extra-marital affairs, substance dependency and abuse ... Jesus, Jenny, this is a couple’s life history, practically down to how often they pare their toenails. I thank you, ma’am.”