Beyond Blame

by Stephen Greenleaf

  Nifton’s soliloquy was followed by a reverential silence, as frightening as it was real. I couldn’t help thinking about the Manson clan, about what black thoughts must have been hatched during mad meanderings of the sort Nifton had just engaged in. I shuddered inside my clothes and looked at the girl at Nifton’s side. “I’m looking for some truth myself,” I said quietly. “I think Lisa knows the truth I need. So why don’t you let me talk to her?”

  “She would talk to you if she wished. But she does not. She has nothing to say to any of you, do you, Lisa?”

  Lisa shook her head and lowered her eyes. “What are you afraid of?” I asked, my question directed at Nifton but my hopes directed at the girl.

  Nifton opened his mouth. I assumed another barrage of psycho-babble was on the way, but nothing happened. Time seemed to take a nap; the world to miss a turn.

  Nifton groaned, then suddenly stiffened, his arms locked at his sides, his legs thrust forward, as stiff as crutches. His jaw clamped shut on his lolling tongue; his eyes rolled up until the sockets were two white holes. His body twitched and jerked, flopping off the couch in the process. Blood gushed from his tongue and down his cheek. His body bucked more violently with each mad thrust, the throes of a mortal wound.

  I hurried to his side but Lisa beat me to him. When I knelt beside her, she reached out and shoved me away. “It’s just a fit. He does it all the time. We can handle it.”

  “How can I help?”

  “You can’t. Just leave. Take Cal with you.”

  I couldn’t take my eyes off Nifton. “You should pry open his mouth. Then be sure he doesn’t swallow his tongue.”

  “I know what I should do,” Lisa said impatiently. “I’ve done it a thousand times.”

  “Is he an epileptic?”

  “Sort of. It’s too complicated to explain right now. Will you please get out of here?”

  Her voice maintained an icy calm. She turned away from me and bent over the Maniac and worked at loosening his jaw. Two other people roused themselves from their stupors and moved wordlessly to Lisa’s side and held Nifton’s arms and legs so Lisa could more easily free his tongue.

  I glanced at Cal. He had retreated in horror at the scene, and stood with his back against the wall like a candidate for a firing squad. I was startled myself, but also amazed at the calm with which the young people worked over the Maniac’s thrashing body, as though they had staffed an emergency room for years and had seen life in all its strange mutations long before this night.

  “Should I call an ambulance?” I asked, conscious that I was asking the question for the second time that night, conscious that I was among people who concocted cures themselves or chose to do without.

  “We can handle it, I said.” Lisa glanced at me quickly. “Please go. Come to my house tomorrow. I may be there, if I can get away.”

  Before I could ask what time I should be there she turned back to Nifton, patted his field jacket pockets until she felt what she was looking for, then unsnapped the pocket and removed a small brown bottle. She held it to the light, unscrewed the cap and extracted a glass eyedropper, filled it, and squirted its contents into Nifton’s open mouth. Moments later his spasms seemed to slacken. Lisa began to stroke his brow and croon in low, soft sounds.

  I looked at Cal again.

  “Fuck it,” he said. “I’m splitting. Lisa’s all yours. Yours and the Maniac’s. Hope you like her.”

  Cal headed for the door. I decided I owed him a share of his retreat. Before I joined him, I looked back at Lisa. “Your father’s being arraigned tomorrow. In Berkeley Municipal Court. The D.A. wants you there. If you’re not, your father will probably be released on bail. I think maybe you don’t want that to happen. I’ll be there too. I’d like to talk to you about the murder. And about Sherry Misteen.” I paused. “Also, the Renzels are worried about you. They want you to come and live with them instead of with the Ussers. If I were you, I’d take them up on the invitation.”

  Lisa had no reaction to any of it. I turned and followed Cal out the door.

  NINETEEN

  By the time I was outside, Cal was trotting far ahead of me, a furtive shadow in the meek light from the distant street-lamp. I called out to ask if he wanted a ride, but he shook his head and kept running away from the girl who had hocked his heart. I went to my car, got inside and drove back up the hill, till I was once again on Haste Street, across from People’s Park.

  My plan was to retrieve whatever it was that Lisa Usser had buried there, but I was going to have to wait. When I was halfway into the grove of trees I could see that another cluster of people had occupied the site, this time a group of tattered transients who had built their own fire and were passing around a bottle wrapped in a brown bag while swearing drunkenly at each other and the world. One of them was curled into a fetal ball on the exact spot where Lisa had dug her hole and buried her treasures. I waited for a few minutes, but it was clear it would take many more pulls at the bottle to blot out enough inflamed consciousness to allow any of them to sleep. I walked back to my car, but halfway there I detoured toward a phone booth.

  I looked up the number of the Berkeley police and called it. Bart Kinn wasn’t in. I left a message that I had seen Lisa Usser at the Blake Street place they call Hell House less than thirty minutes before. I tried to make it sound like no big deal. The woman on the other end said she’d get the message to Kinn. From her tone it sounded like it wouldn’t reach him till he was pulling down his pension, which suited me just fine. Still, I hung up feeling less than sterling for having fulfilled my part of the bargain I’d made with the authorities in the persons of Bart Kinn and Howard Gable.

  I started to leave the phone booth but there was no exit, not yet, not until I fished out another dime and looked up the number for an ambulance service, dialed it and told the woman who answered that there was a girl in pretty bad shape at a house on Blake, drug problems, probably, and she needed help. I gave the woman the street number and started to tell her how to find the place. “I know it,” the woman said wearily. “I probably even know the girl.”

  “They call her Needles.”

  “Yeah. Needles. Well, here’s the way it is, pal. The last time we took Needles in, no one paid the bill. So this time she’s on her own.”

  The phone died quickly in my ear. I considered making another call, to someone whose compassion was less shrunken by the steamy laws of economics, but in the end I didn’t. It was the kind of situation where intervention can bring more trouble than it prevents. Or so I was believing as I hung up the receiver and noticed the sign scrawled on the coin box with a Magic Marker: THE GODDESS WILL BE CALLING YOU. I didn’t know what that meant. I didn’t know what much of anything meant in Berkeley, so I got in my car and drove home.

  When I got to my apartment, my phone was ringing. It was Ingrid Renzel. I was trying to decide what to tell her about my investigation, such as it was, when she interrupted me. “We have received another call.”

  “What did it say?”

  “That there is something happening in court tomorrow. That Lawrence may be set free when it is over. Can that be true, Mr. Tanner?”

  I took a deep breath. “Tomorrow’s the arraignment, Mrs. Renzel. It doesn’t have anything to do with Lawrence Usser’s guilt or innocence, it’s just the time when he hears the charges that have been filed against him and has a chance to enter a plea. He’ll undoubtedly plead not guilty. There may also be a bail hearing. Do you know what bail is?”

  “Where they pay money and go free?”

  “Yes, but only temporarily. Till the trial starts.”

  “So Lawrence will be free tomorrow.” She made it sound like Doomsday.

  “Not necessarily. Bail isn’t automatic in this state anymore. For a serious offense, a hearing is held and the judge can deny bail if there is a substantial likelihood that the person’s release would result in bodily harm to another, or if the defendant has made a threat to another person and there’s a substan
tial likelihood that the threat would be carried out.”

  “So. Has Lawrence made such a threat?”

  I started to tell her no, because it seemed so unlikely, but then I thought about it more carefully. “I think he may have,” I said after a minute. “I think he may have done just that.”

  “Who? Who has he threatened?”

  “I’m not sure, but I think he may have threatened his daughter.”

  Mrs. Renzel’s breath hissed in an astonished gasp. “Lisa? He has threatened Lisa? When? How?”

  “I don’t know any details. I just think the district attorney expects her to testify to something like that at the arraignment. The problem is, Lisa ran away from the Ussers’ place tonight. So the D.A. won’t be able to present her testimony at the bail hearing, not if they don’t find her before morning. And without Lisa’s testimony my guess is Usser will be released pending trial. If he isn’t, I’m sure his lawyer will go for a writ of habeas corpus to try to spring him that way.”

  Ingrid Renzel’s voice was grave. “Gunther will not like it if Lawrence is released.”

  “But it’s only temporary,” I said again. “He hasn’t been convicted of anything yet, you know. He’s innocent until proven guilty, so bail is simply imposed to make sure he appears for his trial. Do you want me to talk to your husband about it? To explain some of these things to him?”

  “Gunther is not here. He is drinking schnapps and playing euchre.”

  “Maybe you’d better not tell him about all this till he’s sober.”

  “Yes.”

  “Is there anything else you can tell me about the phone call, Mrs. Renzel?”

  “No. Only that it was the same man as before.”

  “Was he trying to disguise his voice?”

  She took time to think about it. “It’s possible. The sound was muffled. The words were spoken slowly.”

  “Okay. I’m going to the arraignment in the morning, and I’ll let you know how it comes out. Do you still want me to work on the case?”

  “Of course we do. Yes. But tell me. What have you found out? Was Lawrence sane? Was he in his right mind when he murdered our Dianne?”

  “I don’t know, Mrs. Renzel. All I can tell you is I haven’t found any evidence that says he wasn’t.”

  “That is good. That is very good.”

  I wasn’t sure I agreed with her.

  I tossed and turned with the Usser case all night. It was amorphous, a turbulent cloud, as variable and varied as one of Berkeley’s demonstrations. I was traveling in no direction, was taking no ground, was learning a lot about the Usser family but nothing at all about why Dianne Renzel had been murdered. The key was clearly Lisa, but getting her away from the Maniac would be difficult. If she was inclined to separate herself from him voluntarily, I should know it at the arraignment. But if she didn’t show up, I’d have to track her down, possibly by finding her at her house as she had suggested, but probably by pursuing the Maniac to another lair.

  The first thing in the morning I was on my way back to Berkeley. The arraignment would be in the Municipal Court, a cheaply constructed blue and beige building next to the old city hall. I circled the block several times before finding a place to park on McKinley Avenue, across from the Hall of Justice building which housed the police department and the municipal jail, where Usser was undoubtedly being held pending arraignment. My parking slot was next to an abandoned apartment building that seemed stuffed full of bicycles. I was about to get out of my car when I saw the rear door to the Hall of Justice open and a line of men file out.

  They were handcuffed to waist chains and joined to each other by the chain that passed through their leg hobbles. Two policemen watched over them casually, as though the chances of escape were nil. All of the men were black except one. The one was Lawrence Usser. From where I sat, Usser looked serene, almost happy, his eyes bright, his lips parted in a half-smile. It was exactly the opposite of what I would expect, which made it the first sign I’d uncovered that Lawrence Usser might actually have lost his mind.

  The line of men crossed the parking area and disappeared through the back door to the courthouse. I hurried through the parking lot between the police and fire stations and ran around to the front door of the courthouse and went inside.

  The only offices on the first floor were down a narrow hallway to my right. A court calendar was pinned to a bulletin board at the head of the hall, and it indicated that felony arraignments were in Department One, second floor. The fifth name on the list was People v. Usser. I trotted up the stairs and joined the crowd of people outside the door to Department One.

  Most of the people I’d talked to over the past few days were there—Kinn and Gable, of course. And Lonborg. And Professor Howson and Krista Hellgren and Danny Wilken. And Carlton Usser, behind a cocky knot of news reporters. And, trotting up the stairs behind me, clutching a monogrammed calfskin portfolio, the great Jake Hattie.

  Jake nodded a greeting that was less friendly than I anticipated and went inside the courtroom. When Howard Gable noticed Jake’s arrival he followed him inside. The rest of us stayed in the hallway and tried to ignore each other.

  Krista Hellgren caught my eye and smiled sadly. She didn’t look in a mood to talk. Danny Wilken whispered something to her and put his hand on her shoulder. She quickly shrugged it off. Professor Howson wore a disdainful grimace that indicated she found the entire proceeding unseemly. Adam Lonborg stared out the window, his back to me and everyone. Carlton Usser started to join me, then decided not to. The parents and friends of the other men in the chained line looked either sorrowful or enraged. I drifted to the wall and leaned against it.

  After a minute Bart Kinn joined me. “Ever catch up to Lisa Usser?” I asked.

  “Nope. You?”

  “Nope. I went home and went to bed.”

  “With Krista Hellgren?” Kinn smiled a lurid implication.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Because after you left her place, she called the station to see if anyone had heard of you, and if you were who you claimed you were. Luckily I was there to back you up.”

  “Thanks. I think.”

  Kinn shut down. I had never seen a man so at ease with silence. I asked him if there was anything new in the case. He shook his head. I asked if Gable was going to oppose bail for Usser. He nodded. I asked if he thought Gable would prevail. He shrugged disinterestedly. “Might help if the guy was running loose,” Kinn added after a minute.

  I was about to ask him what he meant when the crowd began to move toward the door. I glanced inside and saw the judge standing behind the high wood bench, waiting beneath bright squares of fluorescent light for the spectators to take their seats.

  The blond wood furnishings of the courtroom were surrounded by sections of milk-chocolate paneling. The curved-back theater seats were sufficiently numerous to accommodate maybe thirty spectators, but we were an overflow crowd. The bailiff eyed us warily, waited while we found our seats, then instructed the standees to arrange themselves along a side wall.

  When the din had subsided, the judge banged his gavel. “You may stay seated,” he said, then took his own seat high above us, satisfied that the crowd was as comfortable as he could make it. The sign in front of him said his name was Wu. He looked impossibly young to be a judge of his own behavior, let alone of anyone else’s.

  The line of men I’d seen in the parking lot were now seated in the jury box, shoulder to shoulder, glum, sullen, motionless. Lawrence Usser’s former good humor had deserted him. Now he stared forward in an unblinking daze, his hair splayed and tangled, his clothes limp and wrinkled, his eyes locked on anything but the faces of the friends who had come to root for him and the foes who wished him jailed.

  The judge eyed the spectators one last time, frowned briefly as his glance encompassed the cluster of reporters who sat in the front row with their pens poised above their pads and their feet on the bar of the court, then turned his attention to the men i
n the jury box. Most of them didn’t look back, even after the judge began to speak to them. Most of them looked like they had been there before. All of them, Lawrence Usser included, somehow managed to look guilty as hell, if not of what they were charged with then at least of something that would make flogging appropriate.

  “This morning we have six arraignments,” the judge began. “You have all been charged with a criminal offense, and today you will all have a chance to hear the charges that have been made against you, and to enter a plea to those charges. You have certain rights in this proceeding. Each of you has the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you. A deputy public defender is in court, and can advise those of you who do not have private counsel of your rights and options. Ultimately, each of you will have the right to confront the witnesses against you, and to a jury trial of the issues raised by the charges filed against you. You may or may not be entitled to bail. Your attorney can advise you on that matter, and will make an appropriate bail motion when the time comes. Now. The clerk will call the calendar.”

  The judge pulled a file toward him and the clerk consulted his list and called the first case. The charge was armed robbery, the defendant was indigent, the public defender was appointed to represent him and he entered a plea of not guilty on behalf of the defendant. Bail was set at fifty thousand dollars. The public defender objected, stating that the defendant had a job, had lived in Berkeley for nine years, was married and had never been convicted of a crime before. The prosecutor pointed out that the defendant was armed with a weapon both at the time he allegedly committed the crime and at the time of his arrest. Bail reduction was denied, and someone in the rear of the courtroom began to cry. The defendant was led out of the room by a sheriff’s deputy, on his way to a bus that would deliver him to the Santa Rita Prison Farm, where he would stay until he was tried or until bail was reduced to an amount he could pay.