Karma's a Killer

by Tracy Weber

  “I’m sorry you didn’t make Dharma’s visitors list, but I’m glad that you’re here. I couldn’t have faced coming alone.” I placed my hand on his forearm. “You know I adore you, right?”

  Michael continued looking forward. “I love you, too, but I’m still angry. You shut me out. Again.”

  “I know.” I didn’t promise that it would be the last time; lying would have made the situation worse. I interlaced my fingers with his and we waited in silence.

  Officer Friendly droned out several names. Mine was among them. She pointed to an elevator. “You can go up now.”

  Michael squeezed my hand. “Be strong. I’ll be here when you get back.”

  I smiled. “If you haven’t picked up a better girlfriend.”

  He gripped my hand tighter. “I mean it. I’ll always be here for you. No matter how hard you try to push me away.”

  I believed him. I’d be there for him, too. I backed toward the elevator and winked. “Then I guess you’re stuck with me, buddy.”

  The other visitors and I rode the elevator upstairs in silence. When the door opened, we walked together, expressions grim, like a herd of cattle en route to the slaughter. Our shoes clicked a syncopated rhythm down the stark, hospital-like hallway. The stench of disinfectant-laced body odor permeated the air.

  A grumpy-looking male officer directed us to a fluorescent-lit room, which was divided in two by a Plexiglas wall of half-enclosed phone booths. Each booth contained a wooden, bar-stool-like chair that was bolted to the floor and a black phone receiver affixed to a metal partition. A sign across the top of the divider read Keep hands in plain view at all times. I considered asking Officer Chuckles what I could possibly pass to a prisoner through bulletproof plastic, but I opted to sit in the uncomfortable seat he assigned me and wait quietly instead.

  Dharma and several other female prisoners were escorted through a door on the opposite side of the partition. She sat on the stool across from me and picked up her handset.

  “Thank you for coming.”

  Granted, I didn’t know Dharma well, but I doubted that she’d ever looked worse. A bright red rash had erupted across her forehead. Her formerly braided hair hung in greasy-looking clumps, and the pale skin under her eyes was accented by dark purple half circles. Dharma hadn’t just aged in dog years since I’d seen her last; she’d aged in dog decades.

  She gave me a tentative smile. “Did you have any trouble finding parking?”

  “Really? That’s what you want to spend our thirty minutes talking about? Parking?”

  Dharma flinched at my response. She took off her glasses, closed her eyes, and slowly rubbed the bridge of her nose. When she looked up, her eyes were wet.

  “You’re right, Kate. We have much more important things to discuss.” She slid her glasses back on and gripped the receiver. “I’m sorry about missing yesterday. I’m sorry about … everything. When you were a baby—”

  I held up my hand in the universal stop sign. “Not now, Dharma.” I took a deep breath to steady my emotions. “We can talk about the past later. Let’s focus on now. You don’t look well. Are you doing okay in here?”

  “This isn’t summer camp, but I’ll survive. It’s better than the Juarez jail I was stuck in for six weeks.” She shuddered. “The worst part is the food. Jail isn’t exactly vegetarian friendly.”

  Dharma was vegetarian, too? It shouldn’t have surprised me. She was, after all, an animal rights activist. Still, it hadn’t occurred to me that Dharma and I might have a lot in common. The insight felt dangerous. Keeping a healthy distance would be significantly more challenging if I actually liked her.

  She kept rambling, whether from nervousness or guilt I couldn’t tell. “There was some sort of desiccated meat patty on my plate this morning. I gave it to my crazy-eyed roommate and traded my reconstituted eggs for the heroine addict’s apple. No one wanted the watered-down orange drink. I would kill for a cup of coffee.” She looked over her shoulder, as if expecting an espresso cart to magically appear.

  “Enough about the accommodations, Dharma. Why do the police think you killed Raven?”

  Dharma’s lips tensed. “I don’t want to talk about my arrest, Kate.”

  “Then why am I here?”

  “I need you to do me a favor.”

  A favor? Seriously?

  Thirty years’ worth of bitterness spewed from my throat.

  “A favor? You disappear from my life for three decades, then con me into visiting you in jail just so I can do you a favor?” I stood up, preparing to smash down the phone and leave Dharma behind once and for all. But not without getting in three final words: “Go to—”

  Dharma jumped to her feet and slammed her palms against the partition. “Stop!”

  The officer behind Dharma grabbed his walkie-talkie and took three quick steps forward, ready to call in reinforcements. Officer Chuckles appeared behind me.

  Dharma’s eyes locked on mine. “Please, Kate. Please. I’m begging you. Don’t leave.”

  Two overwhelming sensations hit me at once. The first was staggering empathy. Not with Dharma; not even with my murdered friend, George. With George’s daughter. I finally understood why she was so hostile to George the day he tried to make amends. Some wounds—especially those inflicted in childhood—couldn’t be bandaged. Not even stitched. Sometimes, in order to save the patient, you had to cut off the limb.

  I almost walked out the door. I should have walked out the door. But I couldn’t. The second sensation froze me in place.

  Connection.

  To Dharma.

  In spite of the bulletproof wall separating us, in spite of the other gaping visitors, in spite of Officer Chuckles’s glaring stare, I felt Dharma’s energy.

  She was trapped. She was terrified. She was vulnerable.

  She might even be innocent.

  And she needed my help.

  The insight into Dharma’s psyche hit me like a blow to the sternum. Bitter or not—morally justified or not—I was supposedly a yogi. Yogis showed active compassion whenever they saw suffering. Telling Dharma to go to Hades while marching out of the room would never pass muster. I had to choose: I could live by my values, or I could walk away. I couldn’t do both.

  I slowly sat down and motioned for her to do the same. The two officers backed away.

  “Okay, Dharma. I’m listening.”

  “I need you to go to my motel and pick up my belongings.”

  “Your belongings?”

  “It’s not much. I only brought one suitcase. It’s all worthless to anyone else, but if I don’t get out of here soon, the motel will get rid of it. My attorney says I can sign a release and they’ll give you my key card. Can you please go to the motel, pack up my stuff, and keep it for me?”

  “Why don’t you call your boyfriend Eduardo?”

  I was fishing, of course. I suspected that Eduardo and Dharma were a couple, but I didn’t know for sure.

  Dharma’s lips thinned. “How do you know Eduardo?”

  I didn’t lie, but I didn’t tell her the whole truth, either. “I don’t. He chatted up someone I know after the protest. She was staffing the pet food booth. Evidently, he made quite an impression.”

  Dharma sighed. “Eduardo and I broke up on Saturday night. I found out that he’s been cheating on me with Raven. For months.”

  She leaned up to the plastic partition, as if being closer provided her the illusion of privacy. “Kate, I don’t know who to trust anymore. One of my friends from HEAT is likely the killer. And anyone who didn’t kill Raven probably thinks I did. I need someone I can count on.”

  I stared at Dharma, not sure that I fully believed her story or that I wanted to get involved, even if did. I flashed on The Yoga Sutras again. Some days I hated Patanjali.

  “What makes you think you can count on me? You don’t
know me.”

  “I know you better than you think, and I knew your father better than you’ll ever understand. You won’t let me down. You can’t. You weren’t raised that way.”

  She was right.

  I sighed. “Okay. I’ll do it.”

  Dharma smiled.

  I held up my index finger. “On one condition.”

  Dharma closed her eyes, whether in relief or resignation, I couldn’t tell. “What’s that?”

  “You have to be straight with me. Why do the police think you killed Raven? Is it because of the fight you had with her Saturday morning?”

  Dharma’s face paled. “How do you know about that?”

  “You two weren’t nearly as stealthy as you thought.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t want you involved in all of this ugliness, Kate. That’s what my attorney is for.”

  “I mean it, Dharma. That’s my condition. If you want my help, you have to answer my questions. I already know that you and Raven had an argument less than twenty-four hours before she was murdered, and you admitted that she was sleeping with your boyfriend. You definitely have motive, but the police need more than motive to make an arrest.”

  Dharma swallowed. “They have other evidence.”

  I remained quiet, waiting for her to continue.

  “You might not know it to look at me, but I have a pretty bad temper.”

  I frowned. That was the second thing Dharma and I had in common. Dad always said that I got my short fuse from Mom. He must not have been joking after all.

  “I confronted Eduardo after my argument with Raven, and he admitted that they’d been having an affair.” Her lips tightened. “I was furious. I mean, I’m not stupid. The man was almost twenty years younger than me. I never expected exclusivity. But with Raven? She’d been acting crazy lately. Eduardo was more fed up with her than I was. I decided to have it out with her once and for all, so I called her and told her we needed to talk. She said to meet her at eleven back at Green Lake, on the dock near the paddleboats.”

  “Wait a minute. Eleven o’clock at night? At Green Lake?” The park was always deserted after dark.

  “I know, it surprised me, too. But Raven had been acting strangely the last few weeks. I figured skulking around in the dark must be part of her new anarchist image. I met her where she asked, but when I told her to leave Eduardo and me alone, she laughed. She called me a miserable old has-been.” Dharma’s face flushed. “We had a bit of a scuffle, and my billfold must have fallen out of my jacket pocket. The police found it on the dock, near Raven’s body.”

  “That’s not good.”

  Dharma looked down and worried the skin at the edge of her thumbnail.

  “No, it’s not. But that’s not the worst of it.”

  My stomach churned. “What is the worst of it?”

  Dharma rolled up her sleeve. A long, red welt bisected her forearm. “When I got home, I noticed this scratch. Raven probably has my skin underneath her fingernails.” She lowered her arm and looked down at her lap. “And she might have bumped her head when I pushed her.”

  “You pushed her?” My voice came out louder than I intended.

  “Yes, but she was still alive when I left, I swear!”

  I reached up my hand to rub my forehead. This wasn’t good. Not good at all. Hopefully Dharma hadn’t blabbed this whole story to the police. I was no lawyer, but—

  Oh no.

  I dropped my hand back to my lap and gaped at the handset in horror. Dharma’s lawyer had warned her not to talk about the case on the phone. Did that include the handset in the visitors’ area?

  “Dharma, you need to stop talking.”

  Either she didn’t hear me, or she chose not to listen. “Kate, you have to believe me. I wouldn’t kill anyone. Not even Raven. She drowned. Some poor fisherman found her floating by the dock. She smashed her head when she fell, but—”

  “Dharma, be quiet!”

  The whole room froze in echoing silence.

  I lowered my voice and whispered into the handset. “Listen to me. I heard you.” I gestured with my eyes toward the guard. “But you have to stop talking. Now.”

  Dharma’s mouth dropped open, but she said nothing. Her complexion turned stone gray.

  I peered into Dharma’s eyes. I tried to find guilt. I tried to find subterfuge. I tried to find anything I could use as an excuse to leave this whole nightmare behind. All I saw was confusion. And isolation. And fear.

  “This attorney of yours. Is he any good?”

  Dharma hesitated. “I assume so. I only spoke to him for about fifteen minutes. He was assigned to me by the court.”

  “Your attorney is a public defender?”

  “Kate, I’m an activist, not part of the social elite. I don’t have money to hire my own attorney.” She tried to smile, but her lips never made it past a grimace. “He’s young, but they wouldn’t have given him a murder case if he weren’t adequate.” She swallowed. “He says I should consider taking a deal.”

  Officer Chuckles interrupted. “That’s it, everyone. Your thirty minutes are up. The next visiting hours are on Thursday.”

  Dharma got out one more thought before they made her hang up the phone. “Kate, when you pick up my belongings, make sure you get the wooden box. It’s important to me.”

  I laid my palm against the plastic that separated us and smiled, trying to give her some form of comfort. “I will. I promise.”

  And I would. But first, I had to hire her a better attorney.

  Ten

  I barely recognized the man who pulled into the studio’s parking lot five hours later, but I would have known that rattletrap orange Plymouth pickup anywhere. Dale’s feet barely touched the ground before I wrapped him in a huge, heartfelt hug.

  “Dale, I’m so glad you’re still in town. Thank you for agreeing to meet with Dharma. It means the world to me.” I stepped back and took in his new outfit. “Look at you, all dressed up like that. You look like a real lawyer.”

  I wasn’t kidding, either. The Dale I’d had for an attorney wore flannel shirts, suspenders, and goat-dung-encrusted work boots. This Dale wore a dark blue power suit, a yellow-dotted navy tie, and black dress shoes so shiny I could have used to them to touch up my makeup. His beard—which was usually scraggly, unkempt, and littered with straw—had been trimmed short and looked so clean that I almost didn’t get nauseated looking at it. He looked, in a word, powerful.

  A single thing marred his impeccable appearance: the fine, white dog hair covering his suit jacket. I pointed to a particularly large clump in the crease of his right elbow. “I see you brought Bandit with you.”

  Dale’s lips lifted in a huge grin. “Of course I brought Bandit. I can’t go anywhere without that little monster.” His words sounded cranky, but his voice held nothing but affection.

  As if he knew we were talking about him, Bandit jumped on the pickup’s dashboard and began scratching at the windshield. White fur puffed around him, creating an indoor fur blizzard. His brown eyes flashed with pure mischief.

  “Let me grab him and we’ll go inside to talk.”

  Dale continued talking as he clipped a leash on Bandit’s collar. “We’re lucky the boys are on break this week and can look after the rescue. I was planning to hang around Seattle for a couple more days anyway. Checking in on your momma’s case will give me an excuse to visit my old stomping grounds.”

  I flinched at his easy use of the word “momma.”

  “Her name’s Dharma.”

  “Fine, Dharma then. But where I come from, young’uns don’t call their parents by their first names. Seems a might disrespectful.”

  Dale stopped, suddenly serious, and placed his hand on my forearm. “Kate, you know I’ll do whatever I can to help, but I need to know something. Are you sure Dharma is innocent?”

&nb
sp; I paused before answering. The question was important. Dale acted like a country bumpkin most of the time, but it was just that—an act. Before Dale had traded in his briefcase for a farmer’s cap and work boots, he’d been one of Seattle’s most formidable defense attorneys. He gave up criminal law after one of his clients murdered a woman—three days after Dale got him out of jail for assaulting her.

  My arrest last fall was the first criminal case Dale had taken in almost seven years. I knew he’d worked on other criminal cases since then, but like Perry Mason, Dale made it a point to fight for the

  innocent.

  I flashed back to my visit with Dharma that morning and what I’d felt in her energy. “I can’t guarantee anything, Dale. I don’t know her well enough. But yes, I think she’s innocent.”

  He responded with a single nod. “Good enough. Let’s go talk inside.”

  We walked across the parking lot toward the studio. I still couldn’t believe Dale’s transformation.

  “Where’d you get the fancy clothes? I almost didn’t recognize you.”

  “It’s like I told you before, Kate. Things work differently in Seattle than they do on Orcas. If I’m going to play big-city attorney again, I need to dress the part.” He grinned. “I bought the monkey suit at Northgate on the way over. I don’t look half bad, do I?”

  “You look great.”

  I opened the studio’s front door, flipped the sign from Open to Closed, and told the teacher staffing the desk that she could take the rest of the day off. Dale sat on the bench in the reception area and gestured for me to sit beside him.

  He handed me a paper bag. “I brought a few more of those cookies for Bella, since the crows got most of the first batch.”

  I opened the bag and inhaled the pungent aroma of goat cheese. “Keep baking these and you might convince me to stop being vegetarian.”

  I filled Dale in on everything I’d learned during my jail visit with Dharma while he plucked fine white dog hairs off his suit jacket. At the end, I admitted that the conversation might have been a mistake.