There's Something in a Sunday

by Marcia Muller

  Then I remembered her screaming. “What did he do to hurt you?”

  “Applied pressure on a nerve.” Her voice was bitter. “He’s skilled at little things like that. He’s got a degree in physiology, as well as veterinary science. I’ve always been amazed at the kind of knowledge he picked up in school.”

  I recalled my initial negative reaction to Hal Johnstone. My judgment hadn’t been so far off after all. “Had he hurt you before like that?”

  She dipped her head slightly, looking ashamed. Possibly she believed him when he told her everything was her fault.

  “Can you help me upstairs?” I asked.

  Slowly Irene got me to my feet. Fingers of pain played over my backbone; my head and knees throbbed; but nothing seemed to be broken. I leaned on her all the way up the stairs and across the porch to the kitchen.

  Somewhere inside the flat a child was sobbing. Irene said, “My God, I forgot about Susan!” She left me leaning against the counter by the door and hurried out of the room.

  So the child was here after all. Why had she told Hal she’d left her with friends? Was she afraid he’d also hurt Susan?

  After a moment I went back out onto the service porch. My purse was still hooked on the newel post at the top of the stairs. The gun turned up under a stepstool to one side. I put the safety on, slipped it into the bag, and went back to the kitchen. On my way over to the table I stepped on Rudy Goldring’s chalkmarks. It gave me a chill, as if I were walking on his grave. Then I thought, Doesn’t matter now.

  As I sat down at the table, Irene came back into the kitchen. “Susan’s asleep again,” she said. “Do you want a drink-some brandy?”

  “Please.” I watched her as she went to a cupboard and removed a bottle and two glasses. “I thought you told Hal that Susan was with friends.”

  “With the Cushmans, yes. For obvious reasons, I didn’t want him anywhere near her. I gave her a mild sedative and put her to bed in the room next to this one; then I told him I was afraid to come to the rear of the flat because of Rudy dying here. I should have known that would make him want to drag me back here.”

  As she set the glasses on the table and sat down across from me, I studied her. Although her hands trembled, she seemed remarkably in control now, considering what she’d just been through. I said, “You weren’t afraid to come here, after what happened to Rudy?”

  “No. After the initial shock of finding him, it hasn’t seemed quite real. I’ve been through something…traumatic like this before, and for a long time I kept on as if nothing had happened.” Her eyes strayed toward the floor in front of the stove. “Of course, reality eventually sets in.”

  “Hal as much as admitted killing Rudy, you know.”

  She nodded. “Apparently he went through the trunk of letters that I left in the attic at the ranch and found I had a close friend here in the city. He must be the one who came here that day. He knew which room Rudy died in. He seemed to know where this place was without me giving him directions. Stillman’s really only an alley; it’s not someplace you’d know about unless you’d been here before.”

  “Without you giving him directions? Did you ask him to meet you here?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  “When he called to tell me Frank was dead, he said there were things we needed to discuss.”

  “What things?”

  She shook her head, looking own into her glass.

  The man was a sadist who had hurt her before. She’d been so afraid to have him near her child that she’d concealed Susan’s presence. It made no sense that she would agree to meet him alone, in such a deserted place. Unless what they needed to discuss concerned something-or someone-she feared more than him.

  I backed up a little, asking a question that had been bothering me. “Irene, how did Hal know to call you at the Cushmans’ this afternoon?”

  “I assumed Vicky had told him. She’d threatened to call both Harlan and Frank, you know. But Harlan’s…ill, and if she called the ranchhouse, she would most likely have reached Hal.”

  “I see. What he needed to discuss with you must have been pretty urgent, for him to drive all the way up here rather than go into it on the phone.”

  Silence.

  “Dammit, Irene! The man’s a murderer! You’ve no right to protect him.”

  “It’s not Hal I’m protecting.”

  “Who, then? The person who killed Frank?”

  No reply.

  I was tired of her games, angry with her silences. I said, “Irene, I spoke with Gerry tonight. He told me Susan wasn’t Wilkonson’s child.”

  Slowly she raised her head. “He wouldn’t tell you that.”

  “But he did, and he was planning to tell Frank, too-if Frank had shown up for their meeting at the windmill last Saturday.”

  “No! He wouldn’t have-”

  “Mama, I’m scared!”

  We both turned toward the doorway. Susan stood there, wearing yellow terry-cloth sleepers, her pale blond hair tousled. She was blinking against the light; when Irene didn’t reply immediately, she thrust her thumb into her mouth.

  I transposed Irene’s facial features on the little girl’s. Then transposed Hal Johnstone’s. Looked back at Irene.

  I said, “That’s what all this is really about, isn’t it? Hal is Susan’s father.”

  Irene paled and sat very still. Susan’s face puckered; she was being ignored. Then she took her thumb out of her mouth and began to cry. The sound brought Irene out of her chair and across the room, where she knelt cuddling the child, as if to shield her from me with her own body. After a moment Susan quieted. Irene lifted her and said, “I’ll put her back to bed.”

  Once again, while she tended to her daughter, I waited, sipping brandy and thinking of all the questions I would need to ask.

  When Irene returned-a good ten minutes later-she had freshened her makeup and repined her unruly braid. There was a stiffness to her carriage; her eyes glittered as if they were covered by a thin skin of ice. She sat, folded her hands on the table, and looked steadily at me.

  Apparently in her absence she’d reordered her emotions as well as groomed her person. I sensed now that the truth was out, there would be no more outbursts or evasions. It would make it easier for both of us, but I couldn’t help wondering what would happen when she finally gave full vent to her feelings.

  I said, “I was right, wasn’t I? Hal is Susan’s father.”

  “Yes.”

  “Who knows?”

  “Only he and I. And now, Gerry.”

  “Is he trying to reclaim his daughter?”

  “God no! Hal hates children. Hates me, too-he’s detested be since he first set eyes on me, at Harlan’s and my wedding.”

  “If he hates you, why did he have an affair with you?”

  She was silent.

  I tried another tack. “Why did he hate you at first sight?”

  “It has very little to do with me, personally. Hal wants the Burning Oak. But under community property, it would have come to me. Initially he gave up on the ranch, stayed back east, tried to make a life for himself there. But I guess he changed his mind, because from the day he moved back here, he did everything he could to drive me away. Then, when I admitted I was pregnant and that the child was his, he made me leave there and promise never to let Harlan know.”

  “I still don’t understand why the two of you would sleep together-”

  She interrupted me, going on with her story as if it were a speech she’d memorized. “Since Frank started looking for me, most of Hal’s energy has been directed toward worrying that somehow it would all come out. If Harlan suspected Hal had fathered my child, he’d write him out of his will.”

  “Why would he suspect? He must know how the two of you feel about one another.”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t say Hal’s fears were rational.”

  I thought of how Hal had told his father about Irene’s affair with Frank Wilkonson. A bit of self
-serving misdirection there. “What about Rudy?” I asked. “Did he think Susan was Frank’s?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Vicky?”

  “Her, too.”

  I hesitated, still wondering why she had slept with Hal, then asked something else that was bothering me. “Are you sure Susan is Hal’s daughter? She resembles him, but you were having an affair with Frank at the time she was conceived.”

  “I’m sure. I wasn’t seeing Frank anymore then. Or anyone else. I broke off with Frank a few months after Hal returned to the ranch. Hal suspected what was going on, and I knew as soon as he had proof, he’d go to Harlan with it. Besides, Jane had had her baby by then and was suffering a bad case of postpartum depression; she needed Frank more than I did.”

  I was still skeptical of her motivations toward Jane Wilkonson, but that wasn’t the central issue now. “Go on.”

  “Then I got pregnant by Hal.”

  This further refusal to elaborate on what seemed to be highly inconsistent behavior made me snap at her. “Could you be more specific? You’ve already said he hated you. Obviously there was no love lost on your side, either.”

  She was silent, her fingers so tightly interlocked that the tips of their nails were white.

  “Irene?”

  “Yes. I’m just trying to think of a way to say it.”

  “It’s best just to get it out quickly.”

  “Yes, all right.” She took a deep breath, expelled it. “Hal raped me,” she said.

  The tone in which she delivered the words was so flat that at first I thought I had heard wrong. Then I saw her eyes: the ice had melted, tears welled to the surface.

  I touched her hands. She unclasped them and pulled away. Beneath the tears, I saw a flicker of fear.

  She’s afraid I don’t believe her, I thought.

  It’s common for rape victims to be disbelieved; in fact, it’s the only crime I know of where the burden of proof is placed squarely on the victim’s shoulders. Irene didn’t have to prove a thing to me, though. Unless they’re severely disturbed, women stand to gain nothing and lose everything by falsely accusing men of rape-no matter what the she’s-framing-him or she-asked-for-it schools of thought claim. Certainly making the agonizing admission to me had cost Irene dearly.

  I said, “Tell me what happened.”

  Some of the fear left her eyes and she wiped the tears from their corners. Then she resumed speaking-calmly and matter-of-factly, as if we were discussing the weather.

  “As I said, Hal suspected about Frank and me. Even after I broke it off, he would make remarks-off-color, but subtle enough that no one else would get their meaning. Then he started trying to hit on me, thinking, I suppose, that that might be the thing to drive me away. When I’d resist, he’d hurt me.”

  “I can see why you couldn’t go to your husband about it, but why didn’t you tell Frank?”

  “Frank had problems of his own, and besides, I was afraid of his temper, what he might do to Hal. I decided to handle the situation myself.”

  “But obviously you couldn’t.”

  “No. One night Harlan had to come up here to San Francisco on business. I begged him to take me along, but he refused. I thought of leaving the ranch myself, but I knew if Harlan found out, there would be trouble-he was that jealous. And I had nowhere to go, no friends to cover for me, since Harlan had made me quit all my outside activities. So I stayed.”

  “And that’s when it happened.”

  “Yes. I can’t go into the details.”

  “No need.”

  “I have accepted what happened, believe me. I was in therapy for a long time after I went to the women’s shelter in Tustin. It helped a lot and affirmed my decision to keep the baby. And I came to realize that it wasn’t my fault-no matter what Hal said. It was something twisted and violent in him that was to blame.”

  “I heard him tonight, telling you you were to blame for everything.”

  “He’s that way, evades responsibility entirely. To Hal, what went wrong in his childhood was his mother’s fault. It’s easier for him to blame her than Harlan, since she’s dead and can’t defend herself. When he got older, the blame fell to teachers, professors, girlfriends, employers. And then there was me.”

  I toyed with my glass for a moment, disturbed by her calm. I’d seen this same type of reaction in other victims-of muggings, robbery, attempted murder. They tended to dissociate themselves from the event, speaking of it in a detached manner that made it sound as if it had happened to someone else. It made me wonder if Irene’s therapy had helped as much as she claimed.

  I said, “After the rape, how could you go on living in the same house with him?”

  “I didn’t. You see, Hal had left. He’d never intended for things to go that far. He was afraid I’d go to his father or Frank, so he invented a request from a fellow veterinarian for emergency assistance in his practice and took off the next day. And I was in no shape to go anywhere, anyway. I didn’t sleep much, and when I did, I had nightmares. I cried a lot, flew into rages for no reason. Had trouble concentrating, remembering things. A lot of the time it was as if I was on one side of a pane of glass, looking out at reality but never touching it.”

  “I know what you mean.” I myself had experienced that pane-of-glass phenomenon earlier in the year, during a period of burnout when the cumulative weight of the misery and tragedy and horrors I’d seen professionally had threatened to incapacitate me. “How did you react when you realized you were pregnant?”

  “At first I just plain denied it. It couldn’t be happening to me. I felt terribly ambivalent-I’d always wanted a child, but I didn’t want Hal’s. I knew I should do something, either get an abortion or make plans for myself and the baby, but I didn’t feel equal to the effort. It took Hal coming back to the ranch-after three months, when there had been no repercussions-to snap me out of it. I left two days later.”

  “But in the meantime, he found out you were pregnant.”

  “Yes, from Frank-when he came to the house thinking the baby was his and wanting to see me. From the timing, Hal figured out he must be the father. He confronted me, and I admitted it. He told me I’d have to leave the ranch. I’d already made up my mind to go. I suppose my meekly complying is one of the reasons Hal claims I’m a victim. Well, I was once. But never again.”

  Now she seemed drained. She slid her hands along the tabletop toward me, then leaned forward, her head against her forearms.

  I put my hands over hers. This time she didn’t pull away.

  “Irene,” I said, “both you and Hal seem to think you know who killed Frank. I heard you discussing it when I was out on the service porch. Who is it?”

  “Harlan.”

  “Why?”

  “Frank tried to see him a couple of times, to ask about friends or relatives I might have in the Bay Area. Hal was able to intercept him both times, but Frank was so determined that they fought, and Hal suspects he may have gotten to his father another time. Harlan’s been drinking more heavily than ever in the past few weeks, and the reservoir where Frank’s body was found is a place he knows well, one where he would have supposed a body wouldn’t be found until spring. It all fits.”

  It did-and yet it didn’t. I said, “Where do you think Hal’s gone? I’ve got to have an APB put out on him.”

  She slipped her hands out from under mine and sat up. “Back to the ranch, I suppose. No, wait-Hal thinks Susan is at The Castles. He might go there-to try to get hold of her, so he could force me to keep silent about Rudy, as well as about Harlan. He might harm the girls. Or Gerry.”

  I noticed she didn’t mention Vicky, and decided that she probably didn’t care what happened to her. Then I reminded myself that I shouldn’t be so quick to judge a situation about which I really knew very little. Besides, I thought-somewhat uncharitably-Vicky was so crazy that she was more than a match for Hal.

  I said, “The security system at The Castles is very good. And Gerry and the girls may
not even be there.” I explained briefly about my earlier meeting with him, and how he’d stormed out and neglected to reclaim his daughters. “The best way to deal with this,” I concluded, “is to call there.”

  There was a phone on the wall behind me. I got up and dialed the now-familiar number for The Castles. Vicky answered, sounding normal for a change. I identified myself and asked for Gerry.

  “Sorry,” she said, “he’s not here. He went off a few hours ago with the girls. He even forgot to take his keys to the compound. I suppose they’ll be late and I’ll have to wait up and let them in.”

  “I think the girls are going to be spending the night with a friend of mine.”

  “Oh? Who’s that?” She sounded oddly unconcerned.

  I explained about Daphne and Charlie.

  “I know them. They own the print shop I use. I suppose I could go round and collect the kids.”

  “They’re probably asleep by now.”

  “You’re right, it’s better they just stay there. Besides, it’s Gerry’s fault they’re there at all; let him take responsibility.”

  Something about the way she spoke made me uneasy. “How are you doing, Vicky?”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Now the undertone I’d heard surfaced: that out-of-kilter, losing-control tremor that presaged what her daughters called “one of her fits.”

  “Vicky-”

  “Where the hell is Gerry, anyway?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You do too. He’s finally run off with that bitch, hasn’t he?”

  “Of course not.”

  “He has too. Answer me, you!”

  I hung up on her. If I’d thought she would have listened to me, I’d have advised her to call her therapist.

  I glanced at Irene. Vicky had been screaming loud enough that she’d heard a good part of it. Before she could speak, I said, “Don’t blame yourself for her condition. You may have contributed, but this has been coming on for a long time.”

  “I know.”

  I turned back to the phone and called the SFPD. Gallagher was off duty, but I told another inspector in his unit that I’d overheard what seemed to be the next best thing to a confession in the Goldring case. The inspector took down the particulars and said he’d try to get in touch with Gallagher. I should stay right where I was, he told me, until Gallagher called back.