The Murderer Next Door
Page 10
My happiest thought—the only one—was that Naomi’s terrible night had ended. While Stoppard tried to reassure me I silently rehearsed the lines Stefan had passed on to me from an eminent child psychiatrist, advice as to how I should talk to Naomi. Presumably this was the proper emotional medicine for a traumatized child: embrace her, show your pleasure at being reunited, and say, “I’m here now. I know things have been very scary. It’s okay for you to be upset. If you feel like crying, go ahead. If you don’t, that’s okay too. You don’t have to act in any special way.” Don’t celebrate the reunion and pretend her troubles are over. Be comforting, not gentle. Give her strength, don’t ask her to manufacture it.
I didn’t know whether I could manage to talk so artificially to Naomi, but I could certainly comfort her, and welcome her tears.
During the ride Stoppard related the morning report from our friend the lieutenant. Last night Ben had remained silent until his attorney arrived. Ben had retained Thomas Varney, a young man partnered with a pair of other lawyers similar in inexperience. Varney had, for the most part, handled small-time mafiosi. That did not mark him as sleazy; gangsters are the likely paying customers of any young criminal attorney. With Varney by his side, Ben told his version of Sunday night to the detectives. He said that he and Wendy had quarreled during the day and evening because she demanded he give up his Battery Park City apartment; Ben refused. Adamant, Wendy finally stormed out, walking away on the country road toward town, and that was the last he saw of her. When questioned in Varney’s presence, Ben admitted his secret sexual life, he admitted Wendy had just learned of it, he admitted she threatened to divorce him if he didn’t give it up, he admitted losing all his savings in the market, he admitted he had been warned that his work had been unsatisfactory and that he expected to be fired soon. He admitted everything, except he did not admit to killing Wendy. Ben explained away his purchase of the pick and shovel with this story: after Wendy left, he had decided to yield to her ultimatum about the apartment, hoping to win her back; but he was determined to keep the women’s clothes and he bought the tools in order to bury them behind the house; he could then exhume the garments after she cooled down.
The detectives didn’t believe a word of his account. When they told him so, Ben got angry and, much to their surprise, berated them as anti-Semites.
The police hoped to cinch their case with the results of the forensic examination; specifically, proof that Wendy’s corpse had been in the trunk of the car. That might seem an easy task, but the lab would need to discover more than merely a hair, or even a microscopic amount of blood—either could have been insinuated into the trunk during normal use. A bone fragment from her shattered skull, significant traces of blood, or bloodied hairs from the scalp—any one would do. They also hoped to match the pick and shovel with the sandy field behind the mall where her body was found. They needed something that could link her body to the car or to Ben himself: any scrap that would place Ben at the dumping site. Just one would convict him.
I knew Ben had killed her. I can’t pretend that I had doubt. Remember his willfulness about buying 10B? Or consider his long concealment of the Battery Park City apartment, the expense and elaborate setup, done to satisfy his sexual desires while maintaining his marriage. He was a greedy man and I believed he had struck Wendy out of that selfishness, out of rage that he wasn’t going to get his way. Above all, I was scared that one day Naomi would frustrate him. Eventually, as children always do, she would refuse to gratify his pride or his will or perhaps a new twist in his perverted desires and then he might kill her too. That fear obliterated everything else in my head and heart.
We were a pompous processional on arrival at the shelter. Stoppard stepped out of our chariot first, stood tall, and moved toward the drab institutional doors with majesty and the self-assurance of power. Jake Prosser followed, swaying from side to side as he walked, like a menacing wrestler. He brandished our writ of habeas corpus in the air, ready to cut Naomi free of the state’s shackles. Last, I emerged, wary, but reassured by the arrogance of my helpers. During the night, Prosser had been at work, a judge was aroused, Stoppard called in a political favor. They worked for a good cause: the rescue of a little girl, a nice middle-class girl to whom such things were not supposed to happen.
I trailed behind Prosser and Stoppard as they entered the shelter. They were immediately confronted in the hall by a grossly fat woman, balancing her big behind on a stool. She listened to them present their credentials and documents, obviously unimpressed, her lips in a sneer, her eyebrows raised. She appeared to be formulating a sarcastic answer to their demands. My eyes searched for Naomi down the hall. I peeked into a dreary room with cots. I listened for her sob. Everything was empty. The kids must be elsewhere, eating breakfast perhaps. It was the look on Stoppard’s face that told me something had gone wrong.
“What is it?” I asked.
“She’s not here,” Prosser said, head hunched low, a champion wrestler frowning that he was deprived of his title defense. “The cousin took her. I blew it. I never thought they’d be that fast.”
“We didn’t have precedence over the cousin anyway,” Stoppard consoled.
“I blew it,” Prosser insisted. “Once we got ahold of her, we could have stalled the whole process.”
Hours passed before Prosser sorted it out. He insisted I stay with him and make no attempt to find Naomi until we were properly rearmed. We returned to the office. Stoppard went off to attend to other duties. I acted as Prosser’s assistant, making calls, reading cases for citation. This was costing the firm a small fortune in billable hours; both men had expended their professional esteem on my behalf. I worried about how far Prosser’s and Stoppard’s patience would stretch.
We learned that one of Ben’s first cousins, Harriet Fliess, had arrived with Tom Varney at dawn. Entitled by virtue of a document Ben had signed which named her as the temporary legal guardian, Harriet took Naomi to her home in Queens. According to the overweight social worker at the shelter, Naomi went happily. “She skipped out of here,” she said. I felt a stab of jealousy and disbelief. I had to admit, though, that, after all, Harriet was a relative and Naomi did know her—slightly—from the occasional seder and Fliess reunion. I had also met Harriet at Wendy’s wedding and maybe a few other times, but I couldn’t remember what she looked like. It was even possible that she would make an excellent protector, although the fact that she was Ben’s choice spoke against her.
Stefan interrupted our efforts with a well-meaning call. I told him what we knew so far. He must have asked me a dozen times how I was feeling. I had said okay for the first eleven responses. On the twelfth, I said, “Take a guess.”
“I understand. I’ll give you room,” he said, again intending to be kind, not condescending. “There’s one thing I do want to insist on, though, Molly.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s going to be a memorial for Wendy tomorrow. Amelia Waxman called to say that since the body wasn’t going to be released for a while—”
“Why not?”
Stefan hesitated, surprised to have to tell me: “The autopsy.”
Of course. They would take my friend apart and search deep to discover the obvious.
Stefan continued, “Amelia is arranging to have a service tomorrow. It’s tentatively set at the West Side Chapel at one-thirty. She wanted to know if you wished to speak.”
“God, no.” To summarize Wendy, to reminisce in public about her freshly killed life—it seemed obscene to me.
“I want us to go, Molly.”
“I’ll talk to you about it tonight.”
“No—” He began an argument, but I said good-bye and hung up.
By five in the afternoon, Prosser had established that we could do nothing to abrogate Harriet’s temporary custody. He said our target would have to be Ben’s custody once he was out on bail and the best petitioner would be Harriet. After all, Ben had already stipulated that Harriet was a viable and
responsible caretaker. Jake proposed we drive to Harriet’s house right away and convince her to allow us to go before family court in order to ask that she be granted permanent custody—with a private understanding that, in effect, Harriet would leave Naomi’s upbringing to me after she won. “Basically, you’ll have custody,” he said.
“I’ll let Harriet live in my apartment if I have to,” I told Prosser. I wanted to believe we could succeed. Unfortunately, Jake’s plan seemed unwieldy to me. And his hope that the cross-dressing could be used to prejudice the court against Ben as a parent also sounded wishful—unless we could show that she had been exposed to it. Nevertheless, I wanted to make the trip to Harriet’s so that I could at least see Naomi and hug her and promise that someday, somehow, she would be safe with me.
We were about to leave when Stoppard banged the door open and shouted: “Turn on the TV! Channel four!” We didn’t react fast enough for him. He obeyed his own order, opening a wall cabinet and turning on the television set that slid out.
Naomi exploded silently onto the screen. It was a still photograph of her, wavering big, then small, in time with the first thrust of the electric pulse. Once the image had stabilized I saw that she was perched above the anchorwoman’s left shoulder, appealingly vulnerable in her navy blue school jumper, her mouth and eyes wearing the cautious formal look of an enforced pose. I didn’t know the photograph. Obviously, it had been taken at Riverside School, maybe cropped from the class picture. It wasn’t very good; Wendy must have kept it hidden away.
The anchorwoman, although her mouth was set in a grim and serious expression, was otherwise pretty and perky as a girl scout. She spoke in an ominous tone: “A cousin of six-year-old Naomi, Harriet Fliess, says the accused, Benjamin Fliess, should be released on bail so that he can be with his daughter.”
The video image jumped. A long face, with great hollows for eyes, hovered in front of a white door. It was Harriet. I recognized her immediately: in my memory I had confused her with a different cousin. Although it must have been years since I had seen her, she looked the same, wasted by poor nerves, her gaunt face surrounded by long black hairs that curled oft” her scalp, wilted by her brain’s hot worries. “I love her. I’m like a second mother to her, poor girl,” Harriet said. “But there’s no replacement for her daddy. She needs her daddy.” The camera pulled out a bit to include the microphone and head of the reporter. The wider angle revealed that Harriet was on the stoop of her home, one of those houses you see when you come in to land at La Guardia, all alike, row after row, made by a giant cookie cutter.
The political favor we had asked was that they stall Ben’s arraignment for the maximum allowable, forty-eight hours. Prosser hoped to steal a march on the custody issue while Ben’s legal efforts were concentrated on getting bail set and made. Obviously that had failed: Ben hadn’t forgotten that he wanted control over Naomi; Harriet was his substitute.
“She’s a kook,” Wendy used to say about Harriet. Seeing her on television had jogged my memory—now I could place her. I had met her while selecting hors d’oeuvres from Wendy’s wedding buffet. She told me all about herself, that she was a brilliant dancer with Martha Graham when young, that her career was cut short by an injury. Later, Wendy said that Harriet liked to exaggerate both her talent and her association with Graham.
I also remembered that from time to time Ben had gossiped about her and his other cousins. I hadn’t paid much attention, although I did recall Ben asking Stefan, “Why are my people so crazy?”
Because you have lousy genes, I thought.
“Everyone’s relatives are crazy,” Stefan told him. “That’s why there are so many psychiatrists.”
Wendy laughed, threw her head back, her mouth open, showing her small teeth. She touched Stefan on the arm, pleased by his humor, happy to be with us. Watching her, even Ben was relaxed. Thoughts and images and memories like this—meaningless, random, and painful—bothered me all through the tedious day.
We were about to leave for Harriet’s when Amelia Waxman phoned. Amelia was Wendy’s closest friend from work. She wanted to mourn with me. She cried as soon as she began to tell me about the memorial service. I cut her off, explaining what I was trying to do.
“Oh, that’s wonderful of you. When you see Naomi, please give her a hug from me. I was just talking about it with Julie and I think it would be good if Naomi could come to the service tomorrow. What’s happened has to be acknowledged and I think being with her mother’s friends—”
“I have to go.” I begged off, avoiding a commitment to attend myself, much less to take Naomi along.
I was glad to drive to Queens, relieved to take action. Prosser and I arrived at Harriet’s house around six. It was already dark. Although I felt comfortable without my overcoat, the air had the clarity of winter, and the sky its gloomy, lowering hue. The house was quiet. There were no lights in the front windows or on the second floor.
Prosser had to ring the bell twice before Harriet answered. Jake told her our names and asked if we could come in to discuss Naomi’s welfare. Harriet ignored Jake, obviously recognized me, and asked urgently: “How are you?”
“Upset,” I told her.
“Ben thinks you should be kept away from her.” Harriet nodded back into the shadows of her house. Behind her I could make out a staircase and a small living room to its left. All the lights were off. Faintly, I heard a television talking upstairs.
“Why?” I asked.
She didn’t answer my question. She winced. “You know my condition,” she said instead, and put a hand to her hip. She arched inward on contact, as though her touch had been a stabbing wound.
“May we come in?” Jake said. He leaned against the open door and relieved her of its weight.
“I promised his lawyer,” she said, tolerating Prosser’s occupation of the doorjamb; but she did not budge from her position, which obstructed any further entry.
“Promised what?” Jake’s sharp tone caused her to look away.
“Don’t bully her,” I said to him. He was startled by my comment. “To keep me away from Naomi?” I helped Harriet.
She nodded. “Miriam doesn’t want to have anything to do with it. She’s a coward—”
“I don’t know who Miriam is,” I said.
“My sister Miriam?” She was surprised. “You don’t remember her? Well, she’s a colorless person,” Harriet conceded. “She doesn’t make an impression.”
“I’m sorry. Your sister. I remember. So it’s all on your shoulders?” I prompted.
Harriet nodded, her eyes uncertain.
“If Mr. Fliess is convicted, he expects you to take care of Naomi?” Prosser asked.
“What do I say to her!” Harriet whispered furiously at me, bony arms spread wide in a plea. “Her mother is dead. What can I say to her about it!” She stepped outside, brushing past Jake, and pointed past my face down the street at one of the other homes. “Mr. Kahn, he lives in the red house over there—”
“On the corner?” I asked.
“Right. He saw his mother shot in front of him at Buchenwald. Lost his whole family. I thought maybe I’d take Naomi to talk with him.” She lowered her skeleton’s arm slowly, a dramatic gesture. Her skin was sickly white, striped on the forearms by long thin black hairs. She put her narrow face and hollowed eyes right up to me. I could smell the dank cellar odor of her body: she had been stored in a sunless life. “Do you think that’s a good idea?”
“No,” I said.
“Why?” She was surprised. Her fingers lit on my arm briefly. She pulled back the instant we touched, as if my skin were electrified. “He knows what it must feel like.”
“Wendy wasn’t killed by Nazis because she was Jewish.”
“We don’t know.” She jumped on my answer with the ready pounce of a hunter who had long expected this prey. “Ben says that area is loaded with anti-Semites. Rednecks who resent the rich city people. Maybe that’s why she was killed. Teach everybody a lesson.”
“You’ve spoken with Mr. Fliess?” Jake asked. Every time he opened his mouth Harriet hunched her shoulders and looked pained. I wished I had come without him, or had had him wait in the car.
“No.” She seemed offended. “I haven’t.”
“It’s your theory?” Prosser asked.
“It’s not a theory—” Harriet began.
“Go to the car and wait,” I ordered him.
Prosser faced me with his low square body in an aggressive pose, prepared to level me. “Huh?” he let out with a whoosh.