“There isn’t much in the statement, Dr. Oberman, and I’d like to hear it from you, if you don’t mind.”
“Because several weeks before—I believe it was a Thursday night, the symphony plays on Thursday nights—I was surprised to run into her.”
“At the symphony.”
“In the parking lot, actually. It was purely happenstance. I locked my car door, turned to leave, and there she stood. I was taken aback at first, as I’m sure she was.”
“Why were you taken aback?”
“Because the symphony was always my love, and Barclay had never been particularly fond of attending when we were married. I always had the impression she did it more for the stature, for the people she was likely to meet there, client contacts for her practice. She even joined the board of directors at one point.”
“So maybe she was there for that reason,” Sloane said.
Oberman shrugged. “She said she was meeting a friend.”
“What did you say to each other?”
“We exchanged . . .” Oberman rocked in his chair, legs straight, brown loafers crossed. “My ex-wife and I aren’t on the best of terms. She’s probably told you that. We don’t have a lot to say to each other, but with Leenie’s death . . . We were cordial. I said something like ‘I’ve seen your name in the paper quite a bit.’ She’d been lobbying the legislature for tougher laws against drug dealers. I asked if she thought it would make a difference. She said she hoped it would. And then I asked her how the trial was going.”
“What trial?”
“I’m not great with legal terms. Barclay had convinced the U.S. attorney to prosecute Mr. Vasiliev.”
“And you were asking about the status of that case.”
“Honestly, I was just making conversation, Mr. Sloane. Frankly, it was very awkward.”
“After all these years?”
He didn’t answer. “She said the defense had brought a motion to have the case thrown out, something to that effect. It upset her. I could hear it in her voice. She said she was going to the hearing. And then she said it.”
“What exactly did she say? Do you remember her words?”
Oberman tilted his head back and looked up at the ceiling. His beard was darker beneath his chin. When he spoke, the position of his head gave his voice a froglike quality. “I believe her exact words were ‘If I had known it was going to be this much trouble, I would have just put a bullet in the back of his head.’”
“Did you take her seriously?”
This brought a burst of laughter. “Oh, I learned long ago to always take my ex-wife seriously.”
“Why is that?” Sloane asked.
Oberman smoothed the hair around his mouth and chin, still smiling, but this time it appeared more irony than amusement. “Answer me this first: Are you sleeping with her?”
Sloane wanted to tell Oberman it was not germane to the issue, but he also wanted to keep the conversation alive. “Yes. Barclay and I are dating.”
“Where do I begin . . .” The doctor smirked. “When I sought the divorce, my wife told me she would take everything from me. She succeeded. She told me she would take my daughter from me, and at that she succeeded. She told me she would ruin my practice, a threat she also fulfilled.”
Sloane had assumed from his conversations with Barclay, and now, from seeing Oberman, who was less than physically impressive, that she had sought the divorce, but it did not sound that way. “Who filed for divorce?”
“I did. You see, Mr. Sloane, I came to the conclusion that my ex-wife is narcissistic and sociopathic.”
“That’s a pretty serious thing to say,” Sloane said.
“Perhaps, but I think twenty-five years of practice and ten years of marriage qualify me to make that diagnosis. My ex-wife hates to lose . . . at anything. That’s an admirable quality for an attorney but not necessarily conducive to a healthy marriage. Everything became a competition to Barclay and everyone either a rival or a pawn, including me—and Carly, for that matter. When we disagreed on anything, mostly how to raise our daughter, she couldn’t compromise.”
“You said she ruined your relationship with Carly?”
“She poisoned her against me.” Oberman seemed reluctant to continue. “For the longest time, I blamed myself for being weak, but I’ve come to realize there was no reasoning with her.”
“I’m not following. I’m sorry.”
“That’s because I’m trying to condense two years of hell into a single sentence. That’s how long it took her to destroy me—two years. I found out that the house I thought we had purchased together was in her name only, as were nearly all of what I understood to be mutual investments. I hadn’t paid much attention to any of that. Since it was her professional forte, I was happy to leave it in her domain. My attorney said that given the manner in which the accounts were set up—including the prenuptial agreement stating that all of our finances would remain separate property, a document I don’t ever recall seeing or signing but which had my signature—I would have a very difficult time even arguing that the investments or real estate were community property. He also indicated that, while he could not prove it, it seemed that a significant amount of our accumulated wealth was nowhere to be found. I barely had enough to rent an apartment, but when you’re going through a divorce, you just want it done. I always figured I had my practice to sustain me.”
Oberman swiveled his chair to reach a glass of water on the edge of his desk. “I wasn’t happy to be fleeced, mind you, but money was never a huge concern of mine.” He drank the water and put the glass back on the desk. “I turned my attention to my daughter. When I sought joint custody of Carly, I learned that Barclay had hired a private investigator to follow me. One of my clients, Mr. Sloane, was a transvestite with suicidal tendencies. I had talked him out of killing himself on several occasions, and since the call service at the time was under a legal obligation to call us at home when such circumstances presented themselves, Barclay was aware of this particular patient. She hired a private investigator and this man photographed me in the parking lot of a known homosexual establishment when I responded to a telephone call that my patient was contemplating mixing his next drink with a dozen sleeping pills. If the implications were not clear enough, her attorney presented me with a signed affidavit from the patient that we had been engaged in an affair. My license was suspended pending a very expensive investigation and inquiry that cost me a fortune in legal bills. I ultimately prevailed when the patient failed to appear at the hearing.”
Oberman’s nostrils expanded. Sloane could hear the intake and outtake of air. “Seeking a truce, I asked Barclay to meet me one evening for a private conversation. No lawyers. No investigators. Just the two of us having a civil conversation. Perhaps I am an optimist—or an idiot. Perhaps I underestimated the extent of her disorders . . . I don’t know. But she agreed. We had a civil discussion. Later that evening, two police officers arrived at my apartment and fitted me with a pair of handcuffs.”
“What for?” Sloane asked, though he already knew the answer. He had obtained a copy of the file from the police.
“Domestic violence. I told them it was preposterous but I spent the night in jail anyway. The next day, at my arraignment, I was astonished when she walked in with her eye swollen shut, lip split, abrasions along her cheek.”
“You’re suggesting what, that she did it to herself ?”
“I wouldn’t know. All I know is that I did not strike her. Nor have I ever struck a woman. You’re a lawyer. You know the drill. I spent sixty days in jail and was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation and to enter anger-management classes as part of my five-year probation. A restraining order prohibited me from having any contact with Barclay or my daughter. Of course, all of this made the newspapers, which was the further ruination of my professional practice.”
Oberman tilted his head and lifted his palms in the air. “As I said, the woman hates to lose.”
Outside the building Sloane watched in his
rearview mirror as Oberman drove off. He didn’t know what to think. He had read the divorce file and the domestic-violence report, and Barclay had told him that Oberman was bitter, that he blamed her for just about every failing in his life and . . . Come on, did Oberman really expect the court to believe . . . what? That she’d let someone punch her in the face in order to bring a domestic charge against him? She’d have to be certifiable.
He thinks she is.
Yes, but Oberman is a psychiatrist and would know exactly what to say and what type of behavior to allege to support his diagnosis. Barclay had been president of the Washington Bar Association, sat on numerous legal and charitable boards, and remained the managing partner of a successful law firm. And, Sloane had spent 24/7 with the woman for three months and not seen any of the behavior Oberman said made her a closet Ted Bundy.
Sloane was no psychiatrist, but after meeting Oberman and witnessing his mood swings, he thought it Oberman who needed psychiatric help. The man had a persecution complex and appeared obsessive and emotionally troubled when it came to anything regarding his ex-wife. He concluded it wasn’t Barclay who hated to lose, it was Oberman, and what he had lost, and clearly had still not come to grips with, was Barclay. Sloane wondered if the loss of Carly had set Oberman off again, bringing with it the intense feelings of abandonment that he had projected on Barclay ten years earlier, whether that could be the motivation for the man to go to such extremes to hurt her now. Whatever the answer, Sloane no longer questioned why Barclay had installed a security system at her home.
NINETEEN
CAPITOL HILL
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
Judge Myron Kozlowski waited until the metal security gate to his building’s underground garage clattered closed before turning off the car engine. The headlights reflecting off the cement wall extinguished, and he sat in a yellow-tinted light. Winter darkness came just after four in the evening, and the lights in the cement bunker of his apartment building were not what they should be, though better after his complaint. A complaint from a federal district court judge tended to provoke the building owner to action.
Kozlowski exited and squeezed between his car and the one in the adjacent stall, stopping at the rear bumper to assess his surroundings. Seeing no one, he walked to the elevator lobby, ran his passkey over the sensor pad, and pulled open the door.
He would have preferred a secure building with a guard at the front desk, but you got what you paid for in life, and since he continued to pay for his ex-wife to live in the luxury that he had afforded her when they were married, this was going to be it for a while. His choices had been further limited because of Berta.
As soon as he inserted the key in the deadbolt of his apartment, Berta begin her routine, barking and panting, paws digging at the carpet. When he opened the door, her black nose inched through the crack, sniffing, but it wasn’t until he stepped in that the real histrionics began.
“Back up now, Berta. Back up,” he said. “Be a good girl.”
His wife had kept Gertie, Berta’s companion, mostly out of spite. She didn’t much care for the animals, but it was another way to hurt him, and the woman’s vengeance seemingly knew no bounds. She would make him pay dearly for his tryst with his former legal secretary, and if that meant splitting up Berta and Gertie, two white standard poodles, well, that was just more guilt on his conscience.
Berta circled the center of the room as if chasing an imaginary tail, whining and whimpering. She would not stop until he took her out, and who could blame her after being kept up inside for nearly twelve hours.
“Give me a chance to get changed.” She followed him into his room and found her chew toy—a large rubber bone—shaking her head back and forth. Kozlowski draped his tie over the tie rack in the closet and hung up his suit jacket. He smelled the armpits of his shirt and examined the collar before placing it on a hanger rather than depositing it in the dry-clean pile. He could stretch another day out of it. He exchanged the suit pants for a pair of sweats, pulled on his fleece and a pair of tennis shoes, and made his way to the door, where he slipped on his heavy winter coat and gloves and took the leash off the peg. By now Berta’s entire back end was swinging from side to side like a streetwalker’s. It was all he could do to get her to stand still long enough to clip the leash to the metal ring on her collar.
“All right, girl. Come on, now.”
Outside, he turned left, taking their normal route east on Thomas Street to Fifteenth Avenue. Just over a mile and a half, the walk satisfied both Berta and him. Turning right on Roy, he began to weave his way back west. Berta found her usual spot just past the cherry tree and stopped to do her business. Kozlowski waited, his breath white puffs. When Berta had finished, he reached into his pockets to retrieve the plastic newspaper bag he brought each day for this occasion and realized he had, in his haste, forgotten to grab it off the kitchen counter. About to look around to determine whether he and Berta might sneak off without cleaning up her mess, he felt the presence of someone approaching from behind.
“Good evening, Judge. It is nice evening for walk, no?”
QUEEN ANNE HILL
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON
Sloane had intended to return to the office to prepare his jury voir dire questions, but Barclay had called and asked that he meet her at her home. He heard a sense of urgency and vulnerability that was unlike her. He picked up Italian food from Maggiano’s in the Lincoln Center before crossing the I-90 bridge and fighting the traffic on I-5 North.
When he arrived, she opened the door with an apology. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think with everything coming to a head, I had an anxiety attack. I went for a run, and I feel better.”
He held her close. “You don’t have anything to be sorry for. I’m glad you told me.”
Just as quickly, she regained her confidence. “I’ll be all right.”
“It’s okay if you’re not, you know.”
She sighed and nodded.
“Are you hungry?” he asked.
In the kitchen, she put plates and silverware on the counter as he removed the lids from tinfoil pans. “I hope it’s still hot.”
Conversation at dinner was limited. Barclay seemed lost in thought and, perhaps knowing what it was like for a trial attorney on the eve of any trial, let alone a murder trial, she let him alone with his thoughts. People complained that attorneys overbilled them, but anyone who had practiced law, or lived with someone who did, knew that, when in trial, good lawyers could bill every waking moment of the day and a few hours during the night when they awoke to make notes or because they could not get the next day’s cross-examination questions out of their head.
Reid stood. “I have something for you.” She left the room and returned with one hand behind her back. “Close your eyes and hold out your hand.”
When he opened his eyes, she had placed a gift-wrapped box about three inches wide and eight inches long in his hand.
Sloane weighed it. “Well, I don’t think it’s that new Ferrari I’ve been eyeing. Maybe the key?”
She punched his arm. “Open it.”
He slipped off the bow and undid the wrapping, revealing a gold-leafed box. He slid the top off. “Oh my.” He looked up at her, then back at the watch, a silver and black Rolex.
She smiled. “Do you like it?”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“Read the back.”
Sloane removed the watch and turned it over.
All my love,
Barclay
“I thought you could wear it at trial . . . sort of a good-luck charm.”
He remained dumbstruck.
“Try it on,” she said. She helped fasten it to his wrist. “When you look at it, you can think of me and know I’m always with you.”
“You didn’t have to do this,” he said. “You’re already always with me.”
They made love on the rug in the living room. Afterward, Reid’s head rested on Sloane’s chest until he could not put
off any longer the realities of starting a trial in twelve hours.
“Okay,” he said. “Time for this cowboy to get some work done.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t have bought you that watch,” she said, getting up.
Sloane stood. “It’s beautiful, but it won’t tell me much about the jurors.”
She walked into the kitchen. “I’ll make some tea.”
They had not spoken about his conversation with Felix Oberman, and, sensing that it had been the source of her earlier anxiety, Sloane decided to get it out in the open. “Do you want to know about my conversation with your ex-husband?”
She pulled the box of tea from the cabinet and turned and looked at him, stone-faced. “Let’s see. Did he tell you how I set him up with his transvestite patient? Or about how I ran my face into a wall repeatedly to accuse him of beating me up?”
Sloane nodded. “Both.”
“And how I poisoned our daughter against him?”
“That too.”
Her voice became more satiric. “Let’s see . . . oh, yes, he likes to tell people that I’m a sociopath. Did he tell you that as well?”
“Yes, he did.”
“And?”
“And I think he has some deep-seated emotional problems.”
She exhaled, and with it went the hostility. She took the teakettle and filled it at the sink. “I don’t know what was more ridiculous, that I would set him up with one of his patients or that I would repeatedly bang my face against the wall.”
“I’d say they’re about equal on the ridiculous scale,” Sloane said, trying unsuccessfully to lighten her mood.
“He’s an intellectual bully.” She put the kettle on the stove. “But don’t underestimate him. He’s very bright . . . brilliant, in fact. That’s what initially attracted me. He was more refined and interesting than the idiots I’d meet in the bars or who would hit on me in depositions. He was interested in what I had to say, my opinions on things. And he seemed gentle, kind.”
Sloane didn’t stop her. He’d need everything he could get to crossexamine Oberman.
Murder One Page 21
