by Linda Barnes
“No,” he said.
“No?” I repeated, changing the inflection.
“Listen,” he said. “You may think you’re doing the right thing, but you don’t know all the facts. My daughter’s made a, uh, a choice and much as it hurts me, I think we have to respect her choice.”
“Choice? Listen, buddy, call a doctor.”
“My daughter has made her decision.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” In the full overhead light Valerie’s injuries looked worse. One of her eyes seemed swollen shut, one half-open. The pupil in the half-open eye was huge.
“I know you think you’re doing the best thing for her,” Haslam said firmly, “but she doesn’t want to suffer anymore. She doesn’t want the public shame, the embarrassment. She came home to tell me about it, to confess. I told her she’d always be my daughter, no matter what she did. But murder … she wanted this escape. Don’t take it away from her.”
I saw the whole setup in his triumphant eyes. Valerie was to take the blame. Again. With Valerie dead, an apparent suicide, any questions about Reardon’s death were easy to answer. Even if no suspicion arose about Reardon’s suicide he could still use it. He could say the drama teacher had been despondent about his daughter’s disappearance. And Valerie had felt such guilt on hearing about his suicide that she’d chosen the same end.
Of course if anyone thought Reardon’s death might be murder, well, here was Valerie tailor-made for the killer. Reardon had spurned her after promising to run off with her. She’d gone back to the Emerson, confronted him the day he died. She’d told Papa all about it, and much as he hated to sully his dead daughter’s name, the truth was the best policy, wasn’t it?
The cops knew how wild Valerie was. She had a history.
“So did she decide to kill herself before or after she fell down the stairs?” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean the cops are going to ask you about that. About the beating. Your story is full of holes.”
“Probably some pimp beat her up. Some lowlife she met in the Combat Zone. My daughter had a taste for that kind of thing, you know.”
“I saw your daughter less than two hours ago. She had no marks on her face.”
“So you say,” Haslam replied. “So you say.”
“Get this straight,” I said. “Your daughter isn’t going to suffer for you anymore.”
“I don’t think I understand you.”
“Understand this. I’m taking your daughter out of here. With your help or without.”
“You’re an intruder in my house,” he said.
“Don’t worry. I won’t stay long.” I reached out a hand and touched Valerie’s shoulder. She moaned and I said, “Valerie? Valerie, can you stand?” He couldn’t have forced the pills on her more than fifteen minutes ago. I didn’t know how quickly they’d take effect.
She moved and groaned and whispered, “Sherri?”
“We’ll come back for Sherri,” I promised. “First you have to come with me.”
“Has my daughter been lying to you?” Haslam said confidently, leaning one shoulder against the door jamb. “I can see she has.”
“No,” I said. “She’s been telling the truth.”
“I doubt she knows what it means.”
“We’ll debate that later. Right now, call a doctor or get out of my way.”
I stuffed my flashlight in my purse, slung it over my shoulder, leaned down, and picked up the girl, as gently as I could, like a baby, with one arm under her shoulders and one under her knees. She wasn’t heavy, but her weight was dead in my arms. She didn’t have the strength to hold on, to help in any way. She groaned, and, hearing it, I was glad. Even if the pain was bad, I was pleased she could still feel it. I didn’t know how many of the pills she’d swallowed, how many had been forced down her throat.
I took a step toward the door. I’d carried heavier burdens, but not recently and not often.
It was a little gun, probably a .22. Haslam’s fist almost smothered it.
“Put her down and get out,” he said.
I stared at the gun for a moment, then backtracked, and obeyed. I don’t think Valerie had any idea what was going on. She wasn’t aware I’d picked her up. She wasn’t aware I’d put her down.
I rested my hand near my right pocket.
“You have a big problem, Preston,” I said.
“I’m not the one breaking and entering,” he replied.
“Either I take your daughter with me or I call a doctor and wait until he comes. It’s going to be hard to explain that you had to shoot me because I tried to get your kid to a doctor.”
“Maybe Valerie shot you,” he said with a smile. “She does such crazy things.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, “but do you know how to set that up? I mean you’re an investment banker, not a cop?” I stuck both hands in my pockets, casually. “Not a killer,” I said.
“What do you mean, set it up?” he said. “I’ll be an eyewitness. The police will believe me.”
“It’s tricky,” I said. “You’ve got to think about powder burns, residue, things like that.”
“I’ll take the risk.”
“Well, I hope the gun is licensed,” I said.
“It’s mine,” he said. “Legally. Valerie must have stolen it. I had no idea she was so violent.”
I thought I heard a faint noise across the hall, maybe a door opening.
“Of course, your wife might come in any minute,” I said.
“My wife takes pills,” he said. “She’ll sleep through the Second Coming.”
Footsteps crossed the rug. Behind Haslam I could see a small form, dark tousled hair, a sleepy disheveled face.
“Sherri,” I said. “Run. Call the police. Tell them the house is on fire.”
“Sherri,” said her father. “You go right back to bed this instant.”
The small child stuck a finger in her mouth, pivoted, and went back to bed. She even closed her door behind her.
Her obedience was unquestioning, unswerving. She’d listen to her father no matter what he told her to do. The thought of that tiny child and Preston Haslam made me breathe faster, made my eyes hurt.
My hand was in position now, finger poised.
“One,” he said. He thought it was a game. Maybe he thought everyone would do what he wanted, like Sherri. Like Valerie used to do. Like his drugged wife.
“Two,” he said softly, lining up the weapon, using both hands, as if a little .22 was going to have a killer recoil.
I could almost trace the thoughts racing through his head. He didn’t see any other way out, and I didn’t wait for him to count three. No dramatic confrontation. No high noon. I didn’t pull my gun and challenge him. I just shot him. Right through the fabric of my coat.
The bullet caught him high on the right side of the chest and spun him around. His hands scrabbled at the door frame and he came down heavily. He hardly made a noise on the thick carpet.
I walked over, my gun out of my pocket, pointed at Haslam’s head. He didn’t look like he’d be going anywhere, but I thought I’d better get his gun to make sure.
Leaning over him, I marveled at Sherri’s closed door, the absolute lack of movement anywhere in the house, the absence of Mathilde Haslam. And I thought about what I’d told Haslam, about the cops and things being hard to explain. I put down my gun, pulled on my right glove, and with his hand on the .22, I forced his finger to pull the trigger, firing a shot in the direction I’d been standing only a moment ago. A second shot went a long way toward self-defense.
I felt the staggering pulse in his throat, saw the spreading stain on the carpet. I didn’t think Haslam was going to be able to deny anything.
Valerie made a gagging noise and that brought me back. I stopped staring at the blood, at the man, and I raced down the hall, found a phone, dialed 911. I requested the police and two separate ambulances. Somehow it seemed important to me that daughter and father not have
to travel in the same one.
My hand started shaking when I set the phone down, like some separate hand belonging to another body. I sat with Valerie until the ambulance arrived.
CHAPTER 33
Twenty-four hours after killing Preston Haslam, I was slumped in the passenger seat of an undercover cop car watching a three-story brick building on the corner of Huntington Avenue, near the Jamaicaway.
Joanne Triola, wearing a dark sweater and slacks, sat in the middle of the backseat. A blue-eyed rookie named O’Hara was on one side, a paunchy veteran filled the other. Both wore uniforms. Mooney was in the driver’s seat.
Manelli was part-owner of the building, a fact turned up by carefully casual questioning of a fire department buddy. One of his cousins lived in apartment 3F. Neighbors had mentioned the leggy blonde guest to Triola, who’d scouted the building in census-taker guise. Her man in Internal Affairs had more than lived up to expectation, forming a swift and secret unit to come to Mooney’s aid. Triola said the guy’s eyes glowed at the prospect of getting more goods on Manelli.
“Figure somebody tipped him off?” the rookie cop said, breaking a long silence.
“Which of us you think did it?” snapped the veteran.
“Cool it,” said Triola.
“Hey,” said the rook, “no offense. I meant the brass, you know, somebody high up—”
Triola said, “Probably you ought to keep your mouth shut.”
That was one of the more civil exchanges of the past three hours. Tempers were running high, the way they usually do when the perpetrator about to be arrested is a cop.
Rain dotted the windshield. I watched a drop roll from top to bottom.
The two-way radio sputtered and came alive. Everyone tensed, but nothing happened.
“Look, Joanne, let me in on the bust,” Mooney said, not for the first time.
“After the premises have been secured, we’ll radio and you come up. That’s the way it’s planned and that’s the way it’s going down, Mooney.”
“Dammit,” he said. “I want to see the bastard when he realizes he’s caught, when he sees what he’s got himself into—”
“I understand, Mooney,” Joanne said. “And if you don’t quit it, we’re going home. Okay? You shouldn’t be here at all.”
I tapped him on the shoulder and gave him a warning glance. Joanne meant what she said.
The radio static died abruptly and so did the conversation. I closed my eyes, opened them. I didn’t like what I saw with my eyes shut.
We sat in heavy silence for what seemed like days. Mooney’s knuckles slowly whitened on the steering wheel.
The radio crackled and a tinny voice said, “We have target car approaching the area.”
Joanne let out a breath. The rookie said, “Way to go.”
“Shhhh,” said the vet. It was hard to make out the words on the squawk box. The rookie patted his holster nervously.
“Target car is an ’80 Nova, beige, proceeding north on Frawley, turning west corner of Huntington.…”
“That a boy,” Mooney murmured, “keep comin’ this way.” I looked over at his face, what I could see of it in the streetlamp glow. I don’t think he knew he’d spoken out loud.
We couldn’t see the car approach. It was dark, but that wasn’t the problem. Our unit was parked around the back of the building, shielded by a dumpster and a spreading tree. The two other units were even farther away. Nobody wanted to spook Manelli.
“Assume ready positions.” The crackling order came after another five minutes of static.
“Go,” Joanne said, and the two back doors eased open. “We’ll call,” she said to me and Mooney, especially to Mooney. “You stay put till then.”
Mooney started to protest, stopped. The three cops melted into the darkness.
“You okay, Mooney?” I said.
“Yeah,” he said. Then after a ten-count, “How about you?”
I shrugged. “I guess,” I said.
“You wanna talk about what happened last night, the shooting—well, I’m here.”
“Thanks.”
We both watched raindrops for a while. Then I started talking, thinking I’d give him a short version of events at Valerie’s house to make the time pass. I found my voice shaking when I got to the confrontation in the bedroom.
“Hey,” Mooney said. “It’s okay.”
“It’s just I can’t believe I killed the guy. I mean, I remember the way the gun felt in my hand, but I don’t remember deciding to shoot him. It happened so slowly—and it happened so fast.”
“That’s how it goes,” he said. “And the wife never even woke up.”
“She was like a kid herself, Mooney,” I said. “Way younger than her husband. Not more than five-two. Tiny. Wearing baby doll pajamas, and drugged pretty well. She washed her sleeping pills down with scotch.”
“Still—” Mooney said.
“Still what?” I said. “Still, she should have protected her daughter? Sure. But it wasn’t her fault. Haslam’s the one who raped his kid.”
“Hey,” Mooney said. “I never said different. Relax, okay?”
It was bad advice. When I relaxed I had trouble keeping my eyes open. When they closed I was back at Lilac Palace Drive.
I sat on the gray rug in Valerie’s bedroom, my hand over hers, until the sirens wailed. Then I tried to stand up, but my knees and I decided against it. The door was open after all. The cops would find a way in.
“Up here,” I yelled when I heard them enter, stumbling in the dark.
“I think he’s dead,” I said to the first man in the door, a white-coated paramedic. My teeth were chattering. I hadn’t noticed how cold it was in the bedroom. “This one’s been drugged and beaten. Needs her stomach pumped.”
The man stopped at Preston Haslam’s side.
“Take care of Valerie first,” I said harshly. “This one first.”
Then cops were everywhere.
Mrs. Haslam was so far under they had to take her along on a stretcher. And little Sherri—obedient, good, and scared—wouldn’t come out of her room. Her dad had told her to stay there, and stay there she would. A policewoman had to go in for her.
“Where will they take her?” I asked.
The cop questioning me shrugged.
I said, “There are neighbors, the Tolands. They’d look after her.”
“Address?” he said.
“Across the street.”
“This is a nice area,” the cop said. “Good people.”
“Yeah,” I said.
When questioned by the police, the idea is to answer politely, not spill your guts. Too much information confuses them. And if you start off by telling your story to some patrolman, you have to tell it over and over up the ladder. I knew that so I resisted the impulse to blurt out the tale to the first sympathetic face. I waited until they got the chief of police out of bed.
When I showed him the extract from Valerie’s diary, the atmosphere subtly changed. Once I explained how that tied Haslam into the Reardon suicide, the cops no longer looked at me as a disturber of the peace, killer of a respected citizen. They all looked like they wanted to cover their ears, their eyes, wash their hands.
“Do you have an officer who specializes in sexual trauma?” I asked.
“No,” the chief said. “This isn’t that kind of—”
“You ought to get a therapist over to the hospital,” I said. “Valerie’s going to need a good one.”
The chief nodded to a younger man and he went out the door like he had a mission. I hoped he’d find someone who could help, someone gentle, someone who’d have the right words to tell Valerie that none of this was her fault. None of it …
“How’s the girl?” Mooney asked, bringing me back.
“Who knows?” I said.
“It’s funny,” Mooney said.
“What?”
“All that time I spent looking for a blonde woman with a snake tattoo, and you say this Janine hasn’t
got any tattoos.”
“She’s a temporary tattoo girl, Mooney,” I said. “Decals, like you used to stick on when you were a kid.”
“Invisible tattoos,” he said. “Yeah. Figures.”
Invisible tattoos, I thought. Like the kind that drove Valerie from Lincoln to the Zone.
A metallic version of Joanne’s voice said, “Come on up.”
Mooney and I had the car doors open before her second word was out.
Apartment dwellers were hanging out into the hallway, staring at us wordlessly as we clattered up the two flights. Later, if we needed witnesses, the same tenants would swear they’d never stepped foot over their thresholds.
The door to 3F hung wide open. Inside you could tell there’d been a scuffle by the red faces and heavy breathing. The room was crowded with blue uniforms, six of them; the department was taking no chances on this one.
A cold breeze billowed the curtains. One of the windows was flung wide. Manelli—cuffed arms straining behind his back—must have tried to run for the fire escape.
Now he was busily trying to make amends for his instinctive flight, joking and winking with the cops, telling them an extramarital affair really didn’t rate this kind of firepower. He saw Mooney and the jokes dried up.
When Mooney came through the door, the other cops fell back a step, leaving a clear path to Manelli. Mooney got within two feet of him and I tensed, ready for bloodshed. But Mooney just stood there, staring at him the way you’d look at a particularly loathsome slug.
“Get him out of here,” Manelli said finally, lowering his eyes.
Janine recognized Mooney, too, no doubt about it. She wasn’t cuffed, but Triola had her by the arm in a no-nonsense hold. The blonde made a quick choice.
“Hey,” she said, “I just picked up the knife, that’s all.”
“Shut up,” Manelli said.
“The hell I will. I mean, I thought I could use it. I gave it to this jerk,” she nodded at Manelli, scorn dripping from her nasal voice, “when I saw the stuff in the papers. Figured he’d give me a break the next time I needed one, you know.”
“Shut up,” Manelli repeated.
“And instead of thank you very much, this bozo told me I’d rot in jail if I turned it in. I been rotting here,” she said to Manelli, “I don’t know what’s the fucking difference.”
