Burdened By Guilt

by Michiko Katsu

  Suzanne expected him in an hour and he needed to get his thoughts together before he talked to her. Daily’s clock ticked without sympathy. Doubts about his intentions were a fantasy Mike did not have the will or luxury to entertain.

  If she was Kathryn Stanford than her involvement was irrefutable. The timing between when Kathryn fell of the radar and Suzanne appeared wasn’t the issue. Some people needed a do-over and the legalities of stealing another’s identity was merely a speed bump. Three tortured and mutilated bodies defined the issue and she, Kathryn, Suzanne or whatever name she used, tied them all together.

  He looked at his watch again. One hour. It didn’t seem like a very long time to find out his career and maybe even his life may be over.

  Chapter 35

  Hues of red, yellow and orange painted the sky as the sun set behind the mountains of the west Valley. Traffic snaked along the arteries of the sixth largest city in the country as it moved from day to night. People wrapped in their own cars, their own thoughts and heading to their own destinations were oblivious of their fellow Phoenicians except for their impact to the flow.

  Relativity again made its mark as the distance was too short and the drive too quick for Mike to fully formulate his approach. The pendulum swung as he outlined the best way to get answers doubting a confession would be forthcoming. She could go either way, passive and revelatory or enraged and evasive. But while one path could make her an ally the other would make her an enemy and he had one chance to make that determination.

  Mike shirt rustled from the vacuum created by the front door opening too quickly. Suzanne’s smile was warm but self-conscious when she stepped back inviting him inside. Four arms knocked into each other and then reconfigured for the obligatory hug increasing their anxiety. The assumed intimacy of premature sex hung over them in a cloak of sophomoric stammering and gestures until she broke away to the safety of distance.

  “Thank you for being on time.” Her smile was gently mocking as she smoothed the non-existent wrinkles in her blouse.

  “Yeah, right, sure,” he breathed.

  “Would you like a drink?”

  He cleared his throat as he said, “sure.”

  She looked subdued in a cream colored cotton blouse and khaki skirt. The three inch heels of her matching espadrilles brought the top of her head to his shoulders. Cucumbers and jasmine wafted to his nostrils and he inhaled her scent the urge to hold her overtaking his senses. But he wasn’t here for pleasure. Black widow entered his mind and he steeled himself against his quixotic proclivities.

  “I’ve opened a bottle of wine or would you prefer a beer…or a cocktail…I can make you a cocktail?”

  “Wine is fine,” he said as he walked into the dining room, took off his jacket and hung it on the back of the chair. The clanking of dropped stemware and other alcoholic drink accoutrements focused his attention on her nervousness while simultaneously relieving his own. This wasn’t just day-after jitters. Of that he was sure.

  She poured him a large glass of wine then excused herself as she left to check on dinner. After she checked and rechecked everything she sat at the table next to him and took a generous gulp of the pinot noir.

  “So, how was your day?” She smiled, shook her head and laughed quietly as she added, “Ward” to the end of her 1950’s stereotypical question.

  He did not reciprocate her light mood. “My day was…interesting.”

  “Interesting,” she repeated. “Interesting is an interesting word.”

  He nodded as he swirled the burgundy liquid around the bowl of the glass.

  “Any luck with the break-in?” She asked.

  He looked at her. “We’ve had some developments but I don’t know if I’d qualify them as lucky.”

  “Developments,” again she repeated him as she met his gaze. She then studied the contents of her glass as she continued. “You’re obviously choosing your words intentionally.”

  “Yep.”

  “So this is going to be a game,” she stated rather than asked.

  “I wouldn’t say that game is the right word either.”

  She nodded. “Fair enough.” She looked back at him defiantly, her welcoming nature replaced with defense. “Why don’t you tell me the right word?”

  “Liar,” he said matter-of-factly. After all the strategies and scenarios, the anxiety over broaching the subject of her identity and involvement in the murders and the only thing he could think to say was “liar”. It was a gamble he didn’t believe he wanted to make but the die was cast.

  Her right eyebrow arched as the other collapsed. “Who’s a liar?” Razor wire cut through the air as each word hung heavily with accusation.

  “Does the name Kathryn Stanford mean anything to you?” He asked, the unplanned bravado girding him against her.

  Like a prize fighter caught with an unforeseen right hook she recoiled into her seat. Her face devoid of expression and color she stared at him but made no sound.

  “Suzanne?” He asked.

  Outside the sounds of cars passed by as people returned to the sanctuary of their homes. The trees rustled with evening wind and the joyful screams of neighborhood children playing their last game before dinner bounced off of the windows of the interrogation room which was her home.

  “Suzanne?” He pushed. “Who is Kathryn Stanford?”

  “Where did you hear that name?” She choked, the name catching in her throat.

  “So you do know her?”

  “Where did you hear that name?” She repeated.

  “Does it matter?”

  “Where?” She demanded.

  Apprehensive, he debated any detailed revelations unwilling to divulge specifics lest he lead her down a path she might not take on her own. Doubting her intelligence and proven ability to manipulate could cost him the surprise advantage he now held. But her face…her face held no guile, no presumption, only alarm as if her flight response was initiated and waiting for him to say “go”.

  “Her fingerprints were found at a murder scene…,” he began.

  No response.

  “…and in your office.”

  Nothing.

  His eyes penetrated hers as the struggle within wreaked havoc with her expressions. As if reading silently to herself, her lips moved but no sounds came out. She squirmed in her chair as if ants crawled across her skin until her capacity for control let free the tidal wave and she crumpled into a mass of hands and hair sobbing with no sound.

  Emotions poured from Suzanne taking control of her body as her tears were silent, then raging, then silent again. Words did not form but her mouth moved as her mime presentation of emotions tore at his heart. After what felt like an eternity she finally regained control. Excusing herself from the table, she disappeared into her bedroom only to return face washed, nose blown and self-control reinstated.

  She sat in the chair across from him.

  “Suzanne?’ he asked. “I need to know what is going on. The entire truth and not just parts of it and not covered up by some literary bullshit.”

  She stared down at her hands now ringing the tissues held between them.

  “Suzanne, I’m two seconds away from arresting you. In fact I should have arrested you already.”

  Still nothing.

  “Suzanne.” He wanted her to look at him. “Suzanne!” He pounded his fist on the table, the glasses and silverware clanked against the surface.

  She finally looked up at him, her blue eyes puffy and red-rimmed.

  “What the fuck is going on?” He demanded.

  She winced as the impact of his yell.

  His patience and his sympathy gone, he no longer cared about her feelings. His career was in jeopardy maybe even his life. He wasn’t leaving without an explanation.

  "I'm…Kathryn Stanford.” It was a declaration. The statement giving her renewed energy she straightened in her chair and looked at him but without defiance. The weight of the words lifted from her shoulders which no longer bore th
eir implication but lingered over her, a dark shroud unwilling to be relinquished. “I took on a new identity when I was nineteen. I needed to sever any ties I had with my past so I thought that was the first logical step."

  "You obviously went to an awful lot of trouble stealing someone else's identity.”

  "It's not like she was using it," she said acerbically. Her hand went to her face at the heartlessness she had not intended. "A name change wasn't enough. I needed to be a completely different person. My whole life is a fabrication."

  Her use of the word “need” instead of “want” did not go unnoticed. Only a few minutes earlier she had questioned him about his own intentional use of his words and he did not doubt her use was as specific. Mike could only imagine some horrible past spilling over into her present. He had heard numerous stories of infractions better left to drunken confessions but nothing could have prepared him for hers. He wanted answers but he would never escape the adjoining nightmares.

  Chapter 36

  Suzanne’s soul was crushed. She stared at him her eyes giving away undefined torment as she searched for the words. The tears were gone but waiting in the wings. Shoulders slumped she righted herself again and again in a defiant attempt at control eventually resigning herself to the posture she now held. Her face washed with shame and defeat turned from Mike’s like similar poles being forced together but by nature kept pushing away. Screaming for the release of revelation her skin prickled with anticipation but hidden for so long the fear of the potential aftermath was unbearable.

  She began slowly, staring at the glass twisting between her fingers. “I was born Kathryn Elizabeth Stanford. I was the only child of Jennifer Ingerstahl and Herbert Stanford. My mother died when I was four years old leaving me alone in my father’s care. They were both alcoholics and addicted to pain killers. She died of an accidental overdose. At least that’s what my father told me.”

  She took a drink of her wine and then continued. “We lived as well as could be expected the next two years. My father was in and out of work and eventually took in two boarders to help pay the bills, one was my mother’s brother, Dale, and the other was a man my father knew from his local bar, Jimmy Ortiz. My father was a pill popping drunk but he was a pacifist. He never raised his voice or his hand to me.” She stopped, took another drink and cleared her throat. “Unfortunately I can’t say the same about the others.”

  Mike closed his eyes and bowed his head but did not speak.

  “For the next six years I was abused by Dale and Jimmy. It didn’t matter what I did, they would get set off by the most innocuous things. Too much salt on their mashed potatoes, not enough carbonation in their beer, anything and everything. I say that like they should have exercised more self-control, as if dope smoking heroin addicts should be more responsible,” she laughed bitterly. “All of those terrible things you read about in books and hear about on the news…that was my life and no one would protect me. Not even my own father. I was all alone.”

  The tears waiting in the ready forced themselves upon her but she resisted. Drinking the remainder of her wine in a large, cheek popping gulp she reached for the bottle emptying the contents and took another hefty swallow.

  “Are you sure you want to do that?” Mike asked, his hand moving toward her but stopping before making contact.

  Her cynical smile at the full glass in front of her was the only acknowledgement she gave him. “When I was eleven I became pregnant. I do not know by whom. I hid it for as long as I could but all of my clothes were donated or from yard sales so nothing ever fit me correctly. I guess I was about five months along when Jimmy found out. He beat me for being a whore and locked me in my room for two days without food or water. I had to use my trashcan as a toilet. When he finally let me out there were two trash bags full of oversized clothes I had to wear for the next four months.”

  She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Turning her head she looked directly into Mike’s eyes, her own emotionless and hollow. “I wish I could say they left me alone after the baby was born but unfortunately the only thing that changed was the rapes were strictly anal. I guess they decided they couldn’t afford another pregnancy.” She spat out the last sentence as if the words rotted her mouth.

  The confines of the room and the topic forced her out of the chair and she paced beside the table chewing her index finger as her other hand cradled her elbow. After all this time she could still see the piles of dirty clothes and unmade beds in each room, smell the scent of their unwashed bodies and hear their maniacal laughter as they tormented her day after day. Memory had a demented perversity giving her no refuge regardless of the years passed.

  “By some miracle the baby was born healthy,” she continued to recount the details as she wore a track into the beige Berber. “The hospital notified child welfare because of my age and the fact I was brought to the hospital by a taxicab and no one was there to sign any paperwork.” She stopped. “I told them what happened. I told them about the abuse, what went on in that house. I told them everything. But they didn’t believe me. They thought I was just some scared kid afraid to face up to what she let happen to her.”

  She put her face in her hands but didn’t cry. “To this day I have no idea what my father said or did but they made me go home with him…me and the baby. I wanted them to keep it…let someone adopt it and raise it…anything but bring it home. I could go…but not the baby.” Verbalizing the fear she felt about bringing the child home broke down her resistance to tears as the guilt consumed her. “No one cared.”

  Mike’s hands strangled and twisted the linen napkin into balls of fabric as he listened to her story but he remained a passive participant as she recounted the details. As she stood five feet in front of him with her head in her hands he reached out only to withdraw. Instead he went into the kitchen, grabbed her a bottle of water from the fridge along with the box of tissues he saw on the counter.

  The duration of tears waned with her energy as she quickly regained control. Pacing again with a wad of tissues in her hand she continued her story. “I was twelve years old when I gave birth. I was just a child myself. A child, who for six years was beaten, raped and sodomized by her uncle and some strange man her father—the one man who was supposed to protect her—welcomed in. Now I was being forced to bring a baby into that hell hole and try to protect it. I couldn’t even protect myself. It didn’t stand a chance.” Stopping short she looked up then over to Mike. She whispered, “It.”

  Emotional defenses working for the good of the sum and not the parts allowed her the impersonal use of the ambiguous pronoun reserved for things not people. For so long the dehumanization of her child held the responsibilities at bay but the verbalization, after so many years, sickened her. She could no longer suppress the shame and made impotent by wrapping them in a sexless pronoun.

  She looked at Mike a small smile lightening the darkness surrounding her. “She,” she said. “She was a girl…seven pounds, three ounces, nineteen inches long. I named her Molly after Molly Ringwald. Hey, I could have named her Madonna. It was the eighties after all.” She laughed tightly but it felt wonderful to give the one positive memory of her childhood an identity.

  He stood and pulled out her chair which she took. The precipice reached she finished a story long overdue for release. “I did everything I could for her and the next six years were relatively calm. I don’t know if it was the idea of me having baby or the fact I was getting older but the abuse tapered off and eventually ended.”

  “They…never touched her?” Mike asked.

  “No,” she sighed.

  “Thank God.”

  She smiled in confirmation then her eyes went dead. “One night, Dale and Jimmy got into a terrible fight and broke one of the windows. I thought, there it is, there’s our chance to escape so I waited until they were asleep and slipped out. It was so small and cragged, the shards cut my arms and shoulders and down my back. All those scars you were too much of a gentleman to comment on, that
’s where they came from.”

  Mike shook his head in disbelief. “Why didn’t you take Molly with you? How could you leave her behind?”

  “I didn’t have a choice,” she defended. “I barely fit through that hole without being shredded. How do you think a six year old would react? We wouldn’t have made it ten feet. I thought if I could slip out I could find someone to help, call the police, something. I—I just didn’t expect it to take so long. The house was so far away. It—it was morning by the time I found anyone and—and I was hysterical and—and the man couldn’t understand me then he finally called the cops and it took them forever to show up and then…and then…by the time they got back to the house they—they…”

  “They were gone,” he finished. “And they took Molly with them.”

  “Yes,” she whispered. “They took my baby. I filed a kidnapping report with the police and a missing persons on the other three but they weren’t exactly respectable citizens. I don’t think my father or uncle had a bank account for years. No steady job, no insurance, no family, nothing. They disappeared and took my daughter with them.”

  “Living off the grid has its advantages especially if you don’t want to be found.”

  She sighed. “I never gave up looking. Never. But I had to find a way to live. I needed to make a future for us…when I finally found her.”

  “And you never did.”

  She shook her head. “In my heart I never gave up. But after years of searching, getting my hopes up only to be disappointed I couldn’t take it anymore. I—I—I’m not that strong Mike. I—I knew what they were doing to her. I was supposed to protect her like my father was supposed to protect me. And I failed…miserably. You have no idea how it feels, knowing you should have protected your child. Knowing you’re the only one who could have and you didn’t.”