by Brian Haig
I guessed she had once been moderately attractive—not necessarily pretty, not even sexy, but striking in a certain sharp-featured way. Cliff, as I mentioned, was fairly plain in appearance, so at least physically he had married above himself.
She was of medium size, possessing a narrow face with good bone structure, high but overly sharp cheekbones, attractive blue eyes, and a trim figure, with thin hips and wide shoulders. But, as with her house and her car, Theresa Daniels had let things slide. Her leathery skin and husky voice suggested she was a heavy smoker, possibly a heavy drinker, and we had caught her sans makeup, which, for all concerned, was seriously unfortunate. In the photo, I recalled, her hair had been brunette and coiffed in a stylish pageboy cut; it now hung below her shoulders, gray, untended, shaggy—less a bad hair day, more a bad hair decade.
Also, I detected something in her posture and movement, a disjointed looseness, as if the spirit inside the body had run out of breath.
Anyway, she had a wary expression as she studied us, Bian in her Army field uniform and me looking natty and businesslike in my blue Brooks Brothers suit. She asked Bian, “Would you tell me what this is about?”
“I . . . it would be better if we discussed this inside.”
Mrs. Daniels hooked a languid hand and we followed her inside, turning right into a living room that was small and cramped. To our left, a pair of French doors led to a matchbox dining room, and to our rear a narrow staircase led to the second floor; this was a home designed to induce claustrophobic fits.
That aside, the interior was nicely decorated—overdecorated, actually—and, to the extent I can judge these things, the furniture, which looked colonial in motif, was fairly expensive, tasteful stuff. Also there was a lived-in feel, which is a polite way of saying the house smelled moldy and musty. This was a home, and possibly a life, in need of a good airing out.
Theresa fell into a high-backed, green-and-red-striped chair beside the fireplace, and she motioned for us to be seated on a plush brown couch against the wall. She crossed her legs and her head lolled backward, with her chin pointed upward. She did not offer us refreshments, indicating she either recognized our visit was official or her hospitality, like her home, needed a makeover.
Without further ado Theresa Daniels said, “Tell me what this is about.”
I have been on death notification details several times in my career; it always sucks. You never know how the bereaved is going to take the news, and you have to stay on your toes. Often the response is sadness, sometimes shock, usually anger, and often all of the above.
Divorced spouses, particularly, tend to be unpredictable. I have one pal who swears a divorcée dragged him to her bedroom for three hours of wild and sweaty solace; another got a knee in the nuts.
With both memories in mind, I crossed my hands over my crotch and informed Mrs. Daniels, “We have bad news. Your ex-husband, Clifford, died last night. The circumstances are still unclear.”
She looked down at the carpet with an expression that reflected nothing. After a brief contemplation, she asked, “Unclear? What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means, Mrs. Daniels, that your ex-husband was discovered in bed, with a pistol in his hand and a hole in his head.” I studied her face to see if this was new news or old news. “Circumstantially, it appears to have been suicide . . . but we’re withholding final judgment.”
Feeling the need to justify her presence, Bian chirped in, “We extend our deepest sympathies. Despite your divorce, I’m sure your feelings are very complicated right now.”
Actually, her feelings appeared not at all complex. Theresa stood and turned her back to us. On the fireplace mantel, Bian and I now noticed, was a wedding picture in a nice silver frame showing a younger, beaming Clifford in an Army sergeant’s uniform with his arm around a pretty bride with a large toothy smile.
Over half of all marriages in America end in divorce, and another quarter are bitterly unhappy, the couple remaining together for a variety of reasons—children, financial motives, habit, or the simple conjugal satisfaction of pissing each other off. And for every one, happy, broken, or otherwise, there is a photo like this, showing a young, sappy, optimistic couple, totally clueless to the hell or happiness they are about to inflict on each other.
Theresa stared at the photo for a few moments, then lifted it up and placed it facedown on the mantel. She turned back around and faced us. She said to Bian, “I don’t understand why I’m being informed of this by a military police officer.”
“You recognize my insignia?”
“I hope I do. My father was career military. A brat. I was raised on Army posts.”
Bian looked at me. I informed Mrs. Daniels, “Major Tran and I are helping to investigate the causes of Clifford’s death. We were hoping to ask you some questions.” After a moment, I remembered to add, “But if our timing is inappropriate . . .”
I fully expected to be tossed out on our butts; instead she asked, “Would either of you care for a refreshment? Coffee, tea . . . ?”
On the heels of what she had just been informed, this offer was, to say the least, bizarre. As I said, you never know. I squeezed Bian’s leg and said, “I’ll pass, thank you,” and Bian seconded with a shake of her head.
Theresa Daniels studied us for a moment. She said, “You look disappointed, Mr. Drummond. Were you expecting me to collapse in grief? Pull my hair out, wail, shed a tear?”
“We weren’t expecting any particular reaction, Mrs. Daniels.” But yes, some small gesture of regret or loss would be reassuring.
She studied me a moment. “You’re wondering what I feel, aren’t you?” When I did not respond, she said, “Frankly, nothing. The Clifford Daniels I knew . . . the man I married, he died years ago.”
“Perhaps in your heart. But in a purely clinical sense, his heart stopped beating last night, around midnight. It’s now our job to determine if it was suicide . . . or something else.”
“Why don’t you just say murder? That’s what you’re alluding to, isn’t it?”
“Yes . . . murder.” I looked her in the eye. “You don’t seem surprised by this suspicion.”
She shrugged.
“Did Clifford own a gun?”
“He did. A pistol of some sort.”
“What—”
“Don’t ask me the type. I hate guns. I begged him to get it out of this house.”
“But it was a pistol?”
“I do know the difference between a pistol and a rifle, Mr. Drummond.”
“He had this pistol while you were married?”
“Yes. He acquired it a year or two before our separation. He assured me it was properly registered.”
“And did he have a silencer?” I explained: “A small tube you screw on the end of the barrel.”
“I’m not sure. He had a full gun kit, though. He used to sit here”— she pointed to the dining room table—“at night, after work, cleaning and oiling it. He took better care of the gun than me. I don’t think he ever fired it, so what was the point?”
“And he took the gun when you separated?”
“Damn right he did.”
“Why would a civil servant need a gun?”
“It was . . . it was a token of his flowering self-importance. No particular reason . . . no threat or anything, if that’s what you’re looking for.”
“I’m not sure what you’re getting at.”
“It’s not complicated, Mr. Drummond. He believed he had become noteworthy enough that somebody might want to hurt or kill him. He was very proud of that thought. That . . . weapon . . . that was his affirmation.” She added, “You know how men are with guns—like penises.”
Despite this assault on my gender—with its embarrassing ring of truth—this had turned into a very interesting line of discussion, but Bian asked, “How long were you married, Mrs. Daniels?”
“Thirty-three years.”
“Long time. When were you divorced?”
“We
legally separated four years ago. The divorce finalized a year later.”
“And do you have children?”
“Two. Elizabeth, our daughter . . . and Jack, our son.”
“Where are they now?” Initially I was annoyed by this diversion from more promising territory into what struck me as mundane familial stuff—then I realized why Bian was inquiring. The children also were suspects. She added nicely, “If I’m not being too nosy.”
“Elizabeth is a senior at Georgetown,” Theresa informed us. “She lives here, at home. She commutes. Saves money.”
“And Jack?”
“Jack dropped out of school two years ago. He’s in Florida, and has . . . let’s say Jack’s working through a few problems.”
Bian glanced in my direction. “Would it be too rude of me to ask what kind of problems?”
“Well, the . . . the divorce . . . You have to understand, Jack was three years younger than his sister. Also he’s a boy, he looked up to his father, and . . . the circumstances were . . .” She recognized she was saying more than we needed or possibly wanted to hear, and quickly concluded, “There were a few school problems . . . drugs, a few legal scrapes. He’s now in a special center outside of Tampa.”
I said, “It’s a mere formality, but I have to ask you something.” There are no formalities in criminal investigations, incidentally.
She stared at me without comment.
“Can you think of anyone who would want or who would benefit from Cliff being dead?”
“You bet I can.” She looked me in the eye. “Me—I wanted that bastard deader than a doornail.” She inquired, after a moment, “Would you happen to know if he kept up his insurance payments? The kids are beneficiaries. We could sure as hell use the money.”
Bian coughed.
A moment passed during which Theresa and I never broke eye contact. I said, “You mentioned coffee.”
This seemed to amuse her and she chuckled. “I was just making a pot. Join me in the kitchen. It wouldn’t be good for your careers if your key suspect escaped out the window.”
“You’re not a suspect, Mrs. Daniels.” Yet.
There was a long silence, then she said, “Don’t be so sure of yourself.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
On that auspicious note, we rose and followed her through the dining room and into the kitchen, essentially a narrow strip, about six feet in length and three feet in width, with old, scarred white cabinetry on both sides. The floor was a checkerboard of scuffed black-and-white vinyl squares, and the counters were some kind of awful lime green plasterboard. Aside from a few appliances and the occupants, since about 1950 the kitchen looked frozen in time.
We all three somehow shuffled and squeezed into the narrow space. Theresa stood by the sink where an asthmatic drip coffeemaker coughed and spit its last drops into a dungy glass beaker. I counted three plants—all withered into gnarled brown papyrus, which seemed to me to be appropriate decorations for the house, and its owner.
Theresa asked us, “Do either of you take cream or sugar?”
“Both, please,” I replied. Bian and I traded uneasy glances. I mean, this woman had just been notified that the man she had shared her life with for thirty-three years—slept with, bred and raised two children with—now was in the morgue. No, I hadn’t expected her to wail or yank her hair or anything. But neither had I expected such chilling indifference, and I wondered if it was exaggerated, a defense mechanism or something else.
Whatever had soured this marriage must’ve been catastrophic— but was it enough to pump a bullet through her ex’s head? She seemed to want us to believe that she did, but was that the truth or a perverse case of wishful thinking?
Theresa reached into the fridge and pulled out a carton of half-andhalf, then opened a cabinet and withdrew a bowl of sugar so old it had metastasized into white granite. She poured two cups and handed them to Bian and me.
While I added half-and-half and made a big mess trying to chip off a spoonful of sugar, Theresa looked away from us and mentioned, “I need a little sherry to settle my stomach.”
She stepped out for a moment. When she returned, in her hand was a tall cocktail glass filled to the lip with ice cubes and some blend of sherry that was peculiarly colorless. She said, “I’m sure it won’t bother you if I smoke.”
A cigarette was already dangling from her lips, spewing pollution into the tiny room.
“Do you mind discussing Cliff?” I asked her, stirring my coffee. “It helps when the investigators know something about the victim.”
“Shouldn’t you begin by asking where I was around midnight last night?” I took that for a yes.
So I asked her.
“Where I am every night.” She laughed. “David Letterman is my alibi. Why don’t you quiz me on his top ten?”
I smiled. This was getting weird.
Bian allowed a moment to pass, then said, “I’m not sure how to ask this.”
“Just ask.” She shrugged and added, “If I don’t like your question, you won’t get an answer.”
“Fair enough. What made your marriage fail? In the wedding picture over the mantel . . . your expressions . . . you seemed to be in love once.”
“The official grounds, the cause my lawyer filed, was infidelity.” She added, “There was enough of that. Near the end. But that’s only the superficial reason.”
I don’t really like to start a story at the end, so I asked, “How did you two meet?”
“At Fort Meade, in the late sixties. My father was a colonel working in the post headquarters. Cliff was a buck sergeant, an Arabic and Farsi linguist. I was young, eighteen, and I used to hang out at the NCO club. Officers’ kids aren’t supposed to mingle with enlisted soldiers, but I was too young for the officers and it was . . . I suppose . . . a way of thumbing my nose at my father. It was the sixties, after all. Everybody back then was dropping acid and screwing perfect strangers. I flirted with enlisted soldiers.” She emitted a smoker’s hack and took a long gulp of “sherry.” “We dated. A few months later he asked me to marry him.”
“It sounds like you were swept off your feet,” Bian commented.
“Yes. I suppose I was. I loved Cliff. He was . . . back then . . . intelligent, kind, ambitious . . . not much to look at, but as you’re going to learn, he could be very charming . . .” Also he could pole vault over tall buildings with his third leg, but she didn’t mention it. Neither did I.
And so on, for the next twenty minutes, Theresa described what sounded like an ideal beginning, an ideal marriage, an ideal life.
Cliff completed his tour in the Army and happily took his discharge. His next step, due to his Army intelligence experience and language competencies, was to apply for a position in the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA, where he was immediately accepted. Theresa worked administrative jobs for about ten years to add extra bucks to the kitty, Cliff and Theresa bought this house, the biological clock began wheezing—bang, bang—two wonderful kids, she quit working, became a Kool-Aid mom, and so on. By the numbers, the American dream in the making.
On the professional side, Cliff was bright, hardworking, diligent, and highly regarded by his bosses; in the early years, promotions and step raises came through like clockwork. Ultimately, however, the role of DIA is support for our warfighters, and during the cold war the action was with Sovietologists and Kremlinologists; the Middle East was a strategic backwater and Arabists ended up with their noses pressed against a glass ceiling. According to Theresa, by the time Cliff awoke to the unhappy reality that he had a big career problem, he was in his early forties, too late to change his specialty or his professional fate.
As she spoke, we occasionally interrupted to ask for a point of clarification, or to steer her back on track. She had become chatty, and it was clear she needed to talk about this, not cathartically, I thought, but more as somebody indulging a tale they now knew ended on a satisfying note.
At times her narrative was chronological and organ
ized, at times free-flowing and disconnected. Theresa frequently paused to light a fresh cigarette, and she twice left the kitchen to refresh her “sherry.” It was late afternoon; at the rate she was “refreshing,” she would be in the cups before dinnertime.
As a general rule, incidentally, I never put ex-wives on the stand. They make awful witnesses. They cannot recite the past objectively— they know their Sir Galahad on the shimmering white steed turned out to be a self-indulgent cad riding a fetid pig.
Yet, if I listened carefully, I was starting to form a picture of this man who died so weirdly in his bed the night before.
Cliff was raised in a small upstate New York town, father a garage mechanic, one brother, one sister. A local parish priest saw a young boy with spunk and intelligence and awarded him a free ticket through the local parish school. Cliff became the only one from his family to matriculate from high school, then college—to wit, Colgate—doing it the hard way—on brains, sleep deprivation, part-time jobs, and desperation. As with so many young men of his era, no sooner had the sheepskin greased his palm than Uncle Sam intervened to borrow a few years of his life. He was sent first to the Defense Language Institute at Monterey, where he mastered Arabic, then Farsi, followed by an assignment to a military intelligence center, at Fort Meade, Maryland, which, for sure, beat the alternative enjoyed by so many of his hapless peers—humping a ninety-pound ruck in the boonies of Southeast Asia.
And what jumped out from this narrative arc, in my view, was the moxie of the man. Having escaped a deeply impoverished background, he put himself through college, then was selected by the Army for advanced schooling, then for high-level intelligence work, and the pièce de résistance, he bagged a colonel’s daughter. Given the Army’s fraternization codes, this is akin to a commoner laying wood on a princess and, for Cliff, a big bump up in the social registry. With his entry into the Defense Intelligence Agency, he became a white-collar professional, an educated man in an honorable line of work, which—with luck, skill, and the right breaks—could lead to bigger things.
