The Silenced Women

by Frederick Weisel

  Molly lowered her head and leaned forward. “Are you really a murder detective?”

  “Homicide, yes,” Coyle said. “Why?”

  “I don’t know, no offense, but you don’t look like the ones on TV. They look different, more…tight.”

  “Tight?”

  “Yeah, something like that. The clothes and the hair. You’re more—”

  “Loose?” Coyle offered.

  “Yeah, I mean, no offense or anything. You’re okay and all.”

  Looking up, Coyle saw Bailey smiling at him.

  “Did Lisa have a boyfriend?” Coyle asked.

  “A boyfriend?” Molly laughed. She trimmed her ash on the edge of a coffee mug. “Lisa was, you know…outgoing. Guys thought she was hot.”

  “Did you meet any of them?”

  “Not really. They never came here.”

  “Do you know if there was one she dated more than the others?”

  “I don’t think she ever had just one,” Kira said. “Anyway, all we saw was their cars. A couple weeks ago she got picked up out front by a guy in a Lexus. I mean, the guys we go out with can barely afford a car.”

  Coyle looked at his notepad. “What about three friends who might have been together with her—a white guy, an Asian, a Hispanic? Ring any bells?”

  The girls shook their heads.

  “So you don’t know her boyfriends? I thought that was the kind of stuff roommates talked about.”

  “Not Lisa,” Kira said. “At least not that way.”

  “What way was it?” Coyle asked.

  “I don’t know—it’s weird talking about her now, after she’s…gone.” The girls looked at each other.

  “What is it?”

  “Lisa had this thing about guys and sex,” Molly said. “She was, like, really into it.”

  “Oh, my God,” Kira said. “I can’t believe you said that.”

  “What?” Molly looked at Coyle. “It doesn’t make any difference now, does it?”

  “Why don’t you tell me what you were going to say?”

  “Lisa told me one time she made it with a guy for the first time when she was twelve. I don’t know if I believed her, but it was, like, a huge deal for her. When she was out with guys, that was the first thing she thought about. She wore a lot of micros and fishnets. Slutty stuff. Maybe it was part of her bipolar thing, I don’t know.”

  “Her bipolar thing?”

  “She was, I don’t know what you call it…uneven. Way, way up and then way, way down. I know she had medication, but she didn’t always take it.”

  “When she was up, she was fidgety and talking all the time,” Kira said. “When she was down, she wouldn’t say anything for, like, two days. Sometimes I felt sorry for her, but it was weird.”

  “Did she have any girlfriends?” Coyle asked.

  “Not that I know of.”

  “She was sort of close to Jessica, the woman who lived here before us,” Molly said. “I can give you her cell number.” She picked up her phone, scrolled through a list, and then held up the phone to Coyle.

  Coyle jotted down the number and asked Kira to show them Elise’s bedroom. It was the first of three on the apartment’s central hallway.

  Bailey went into the room alone and shot a dozen photos from different angles. When she was finished, she handed Coyle a pair of latex gloves and shoe coverings. “Boy,” she said quietly, “when I’m murdered and my body’s dumped in a park, I hope someone nicer than those two girls is around to remember me.”

  Coyle pulled on the gloves and coverings. “Give me a hundred bucks, and when you’re murdered and your body’s dumped in a park, I’ll say I always knew you were the smart one.”

  “That’s sweet, Marty, but meaningless coming from a loose detective.” Bailey walked across the room to a chest-high dresser and opened the top drawer.

  Coyle looked at the room’s cluttered messiness, with clothing piled on the bed and scattered on the floor. He thought of its finality for the victim. Had she known she would never return, would she have left it differently?

  He approached the nightstand, which held a lamp and a stack of four books. With one finger, he turned the books to read the titles: The Collected Poems of John Keats, The Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry, Woman’s Orgasm, and Lady Sophia’s Rescue: A Regency Romance. He remembered attending a memorial service for a former professor. A family member had read a list of the books from the professor’s nightstand as if the titles alone were a reflection of the man’s character.

  “World’s largest collection of thongs.” Bailey reached her hands into the dresser drawer. “I’m almost positive my job description didn’t say anything about looking through the underwear of dead people.”

  “It’s not in the job description,” Coyle said. “It’s under Benefits.” He picked up the books. The Keats volume was worn. Inside, the page margins were covered in a looping handwritten scrawl. He read part of a poem underlined in black ink: “Now, a soft kiss.” Poetry always seemed feminine to Coyle. It made him uncomfortable. What was he supposed to think or feel? Should he think of a soft kiss from Adrienne? What was a soft kiss, anyway? What did the victim, the girl in the park whose head was crushed, think when she read this poem and underlined the words? Did it make any difference to her before she was killed? He closed the Keats and put it in an evidence bag.

  On the nightstand a framed photograph hid behind a clock. It showed a man dressed in baggy trousers, shirt, and tie, standing at the edge of a field. The man’s features looked like the victim’s. Coyle put the photo in a separate evidence bag.

  In the nightstand’s drawer, Coyle found half a dozen prescription bottles with “Elise Durand” on the label: Haldol, Lithium, Risperdal, Depakote, and Paxil. He knew the first was an antipsychotic, the second a treatment for manic depression. He opened a bottle with the label torn off and showed it to Bailey.

  She poured the contents into her gloved palm and counted four different kinds of tablets. “OxyContin, or synthetic heroin,” she said, pointing to several hard, yellow pills. “These blue ones are Ecstasy. I don’t recognize the others.” She put the pills back in the bottle and dropped it into an evidence bag.

  Coyle looked at the posters lining three of the room’s walls: Tom Waits, a sweaty-faced female singer Coyle didn’t know, an art print of a street café at night, and another of a woman lying beside a lake. He stared at the last poster, peeled off the tape, and laid the poster on the bed.

  “Check out what I found in the sweater drawer.” Bailey held up a plastic bag filled with a green, grainy substance, rolled tight, and bound with rubber bands. “Cannabis sativa. Blue Dream, if I had to guess. Not that I have any personal knowledge. By the way, why’s stuff always hidden in the sweater drawer? Are sweaters some kind of high-security thing?”

  “It’s why I brought you, Bailey,” Coyle said. “Only someone with your training could get past the sweaters.” He turned to a handmade collage on the last wall. It was about three feet square, with words written in markers and pictures glued on. One picture was Keats, whom Coyle recognized from the book cover; another was an enlargement of the man in the nightstand photo. The words in marker were short phrases: “All I Want Is Boundless Love” and “Pray for the Grace of Accuracy.” In the center was “Ne M’oubliez Pas.”

  “Know any French?” Coyle asked.

  “Oui, monsieur.” Bailey made a stage bow. “The department requires it of all new hires so we can infiltrate those new French gangs downtown. Once they opened that café on Fourth Street, it’s been one baguette fight after another.”

  Coyle typed the words into a translation app on his phone. The translation read “Don’t Forget Me.” He pulled the collage off the wall, rolled it up, and put it beside the evidence bags.

  “I do know one French phrase.” Bailey stood in the closet d
oorway, looking through the hanging clothes. “Il y a une couille dans le potage. My high school friend Andy used to say it all the time. It means something like ‘There’s a problem here,’ but it translates as ‘There’s a testicle in the soup.’ Fits almost any occasion.”

  Coyle walked across the room to a small wooden desk. On it lay a laptop and two small pieces of paper, with scribbled notes that looked like appointments. He put the computer and the paper in separate evidence bags. For a moment he watched Bailey search the closet. He thought of the way the roommates described the victim’s oversexed clothes and unstable moods. She was pretty but overdressed and had mental issues. In her room he and Bailey had found poetry, prescription meds, and illegal drugs—all of it hidden from her roommates. What did this add up to, and what did it have to do with her being killed?

  He left the desk, then turned and came back. With his right hand, he reached under the desktop and felt from one side to the other. In one of the far corners, he touched a hard object. Bending over, he saw something taped to the desk’s underside.

  He pulled on it and found, wrapped in tape, a black pocketknife made of molded polymer. Coyle had seen one like it a few years before. He’d arrested a returning Iraq War vet on assault charges and found it in the guy’s boot. The knife was a Microtech automatic. Coyle pressed a button near one end, and a three-inch, scalpel-sharp steel blade sprang out. The blade was covered in a dried, red substance.

  Leaning over his shoulder, Bailey squinted at the knife. “What do you think the stuff on the blade is?”

  “Probably exactly what you think it is.”

  “Il y a une couille dans le potage,” Bailey said.

  (ii)

  (WEDNESDAY, 11:32 A.M.)

  “I wish you’d called ahead, before you came in.” Craig Lerner sat behind a sleek, glass-topped desk. The sleeves of his pressed shirt were rolled to the middle of his forearms. He pointed Rivas to a black leather chair. “I could’ve saved you a trip. My attorney assures me the only way you can compel me to answer questions is by issuing a subpoena, and that requires a judge’s order.”

  “He on retainer?” Frames stood across the room with his back to Lerner, peering at a row of wall-mounted documents.

  “Who?” Lerner asked.

  “Your attorney.”

  Lerner stared at Frames. “I understand your need to collect as much information as you can.” He turned again to Rivas. “But I’ve already told you everything I know about Elise that bears on this case.”

  Frames snorted. “Everything that bears on this case.”

  “We have more questions,” Rivas said, looking at his watch. He could tell Lerner was going to waste another five minutes jerking them around. He hated seeing this shabby side of people when they were backed into a corner. Sometimes he wondered if being around so much lying made him a liar. He found himself telling Eddie small lies about cases to avoid extra work. He even kept things from his wife, Teresa—not telling her how he dreamed of death.

  “As business owners,” Lerner said, “my partner and I need to follow certain professional standards as regards our employees…and former employees, so that our clients can trust their reputations to us.”

  “Trust? In advertising? You’re kidding, right?” Frames leaned close to a shelf to examine the inscription on a star-shaped trophy.

  Lerner ignored the comment. “I don’t have to tell you what a small community this is, and how reputations can be—”

  “Mr. Lerner, we’re conducting a homicide investigation, and we’re in a hurry,” Rivas said quickly. “We need to ask you some questions. The sooner you answer them, the sooner we get out of your life and move on to someone else’s life. When you take this attitude, it makes you seem—”

  “Guilty,” Frames said.

  “Uncooperative,” Rivas said.

  “Whoa, whoa, hold it right there.” Lerner pushed himself away from his desk. He stood, facing Rivas, who stared back at him implacably. “I don’t appreciate this.”

  “How about if you sit down?” Rivas said.

  “Is he going to sit down?” Lerner gestured toward Frames.

  “Don’t worry about him. Just sit down.”

  Rivas waited until Lerner was seated. The problem with secrets, he thought, is they pile up inside us and become another person living in our skin, like a second life that, after a while, we can’t tell from our own. “Let’s start with this,” he said. “You told Detective Frames that Elise Durand was unpredictable. In what way?”

  “We’re in the image business. We have to be super-conscious of how we look to our clients. Our customers—wineries, banks, car dealers, doctor offices—are aware of their public image. Elise was a gifted artist, but she had some habits at odds with our office policies. She wore inappropriate clothing to the workplace. Very short skirts. Lingerie tops. And with the clients, she’d act out.”

  “Act out?”

  “Make off-color jokes, flirt. When she was in one of her manic swings, we never knew what to expect.”

  “Did you talk to her about it?”

  “Of course, but it was awkward for me…as a man and her boss. Usually, I had my admin speak to her. Anyway, my point is, I think she may have…come to the attention of men, and maybe that had something to do with what happened to her.”

  “What sort of men?” Frames crossed the room and sat next to Rivas. “Are we talking about one of your clients?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just speculating, trying to be helpful.”

  “Oh, great,” Frames said, “now you’re trying to be helpful.”

  Rivas took a photo from a file folder on his lap. “This is from Elise Durand’s Facebook page. You know this man?”

  Lerner looked at the photo without touching it. “No, I don’t think I do.”

  “You’re sure?” Rivas watched Lerner. It was almost over. Liars always give it up in the end. Just as one day Teresa would discover his dreams, just by looking into his eyes.

  Lerner smiled tightly. “I just said so.”

  “We’re going to take Elise’s hard drive,” Rivas said. “When we’re finished here, you’ll need to show us where it is.”

  “Is that really necessary? It has our client files. Don’t you need a court order?”

  “Do you want to go through that—with the publicity and all?”

  “Publicity?” Lerner looked incredulous. “What publicity?”

  “One thing,” Frames said. “If we ask your admin if you were in Elise’s cubicle this morning, what’s she going to say?”

  “I don’t know. I may have gone there this morning. Why?”

  “Because if you removed anything from Ms. Durand’s hard drive, it would constitute obstruction of an investigation, which is a misdemeanor.”

  Lerner sank in his chair. “Shit, you guys are just going to keep fucking with me, aren’t you?” He bit his lip and looked out the office window. “All right, look…that guy…the one in the Facebook photo, his name’s Christopher Bennett. He’s a client. He runs two dental offices, one here and another in Petaluma. We create print and TV campaigns for him. Elise did all the graphics. Apparently, Chris and Elise had a relationship. I didn’t find out until…recently.”

  “A relationship?” Rivas asked.

  “Whatever you call it. I don’t know. I saw them in his car one time in the parking garage. They were…together…kissing. Sometimes Elise came back from lunch, and her clothes and hair were messed up. It was pretty clear what was going on. I should’ve addressed it, but there you are.”

  “Sounds like we need to talk to Dr. Bennett.” Rivas stood to leave.

  “I just want you to know that the reason I didn’t say anything to you earlier is I’m sure Chris didn’t have anything to do with this other…killing thing. He’s a—”

  “Dentist?” Frames said.

  L
erner shook his head. “I was going to say family man.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  (i)

  (WEDNESDAY, 12:10 P.M.)

  Kate stood in the doorway to Mahler’s office. She held out a wrapped sandwich. “Spiro’s Greek Deli. The Number Seven. The Stroke Victim. Meat loaf and bacon on a soft roll, with purple onions, pepperoncini, whole-grain mustard. Extra salt. No goddamned lettuce. No frigging tomatoes. And no mother-fucking sprouts. Did I get that right?”

  Mahler smiled. “How’d you get in here?”

  Kate sat down in the chair that faced Mahler’s desk. She put the sandwich on a pile of folders. “I bought a Number Three for Cindy in the lobby. She’ll do anything for me, at least for the next twenty minutes.”

  She reached into a bag and took out a boxed salad. Her red-brown hair was longer than he remembered. With one hand, she pulled her hair away from her freckled face and looked at him. It was a gesture he had seen a thousand times.

  “What?” she said. “Has it been that long?”

  “A while.”

  “I’m the same girl, Eddie.”

  He nodded and looked down at his sandwich. He tore off the tape. “You hear what we got?”

  “Whole city’s heard what you got, Eddie. Even poorly paid attorneys like me. That’s why I’m here. You forget to eat when you’re on one of these things. Go on. You’re allowed. I’ll join you.”

  Mahler unwrapped the sandwich and took a bite. “Some things don’t change,” he said.

  “Are we talking about me again?”

  “Actually, I was thinking of the Number Seven.”

  Kate leaned forward. “How’s the headache?”

  “Is it that obvious?”

  “Dark circles.” Kate pointed under her own eyes. “Dead giveaway. Remember, we lived together for three years. Let me guess: a hundred milligrams of Imitrex and four hundred of ibuprofen every six hours, right?”

  “More or less. Can we talk about something else?”

  “Team doing okay?” Kate asked. “I hear you have two new ones. Steven Frames from the uniforms. Seems like an eager guy.”

  “We’ll see. Long as he shoots the right people.”