Sandra’s mouth twitched upwards, but she couldn’t force a tolerant smile. “You’re not being clear,” she said. “Maybe you need an interpreter.”
I glanced at Victoria Douglass again—she was definitely watching us. Impulsively, I switched from speech to sign. “Maybe Frank Bixby didn’t kill James Douglass,” I signed.
Sandra stared at me, sighed, and pushed her purse farther back on her shoulder. “So now you think you’re the judge,” she signed. “Or a detective. Remember what I said. In a courtroom, everyone has one specific job. Do your job; let other people do theirs.”
“Maybe Dr. Douglass and Rita were lovers,” I signed.
“Don’t suggest such a thing,” Sandra signed back. “It would stain his memory, and hurt his wife. Keep your guesses to yourself. But if you think I prejudiced the jury, go see the judge. He and I have worked together for years; he’s always said he respects my expertise. But if you think he’d be interested in the opinion of a last-minute replacement who’s never interpreted in court before, go ahead, lodge a complaint. We’ll see how far you get. And we’ll see whether you ever get another job in this courtroom, or any courtroom.”
She walked away. I looked after her, my back tense. A moment later, Victoria Douglass tapped my shoulder.
“Excuse me,” she said. “I’m—well, you know who I am. But I don’t know who you are. That is, I’m surprised Christine isn’t here. Is she all right?”
“She’s fine. But her husband had a heart attack, so she had to go to the hospital with him.” I held out my hand. “I’m her replacement, Jane Ciardi.”
She shook my hand, her grasp firm but measured. “It’s good to meet you. And I’m sorry about Christine’s husband. I hope he’ll be all right.” She paused, smiling shyly. “I thought I might take a quick walk. But I don’t want to be alone, and I don’t really know anyone here—do you? Could we take a walk together?”
Did some code forbid interpreters from having private conversations with witnesses? If so, I was too new to all this to know. “I’d like that,” I said, and we walked out of the courthouse.
The rain had stopped, but the air still felt cold and wet. I liked it. I felt encouraged by its freshness, by the way it pricked my skin to renewed alertness, by the brisk scent of delayed but insistent spring. I liked the gray sky, and the puddles seeping away steadily through cracks in the sidewalk.
“Interpreting in court must be stressful,” Victoria Douglass said, setting a leisurely pace for us. “I couldn’t help noticing, just now, that you didn’t seem to be getting along with your co-interpreter.”
“We had a professional disagreement,” I said. “Sandra has very definite opinions.” Abruptly, I stopped speaking and switched to sign. “And a very big mouth.”
Victoria Douglass chuckled sympathetically.
“I thought so,” I said. “You do understand sign.”
“No, I don’t,” she said—evenly, pleasantly. “What makes you think I do?”
I pictured her sucking her stomach in when Rita Hanson signed “fat wife,” looking down at her hands when Rita signed “all the boyfriends I want.” “I’ve gotten into the habit of watching people,” I said. “It comes with the job, I guess. I watch people’s hands, especially, but also their faces, the way they hold their bodies. When Rita was testifying, the things she signed didn’t always match up with the words Sandra voiced. At times, I thought you were reacting to what Rita signed, not to what Sandra said.”
“That’s very interesting,” Victoria Douglass said politely. Her facial expression remained pleasantly unreadable.
“And you and your husband were married for over twenty years,” I said, “and he worked at schools for the deaf. You must have gone to many school functions; you must have entertained deaf people in your home. I’m sure you picked up some sign language, probably more than your husband realized. And when you moved here, to make a new start after whatever happened in California—you said you and he wanted to accomplish something special here. You did so much to support him in his new job, even baking cookies for committee meetings. Did you make a new effort to learn sign language too? That would be a good way to support him.”
“It would have been,” she agreed, still smiling. “I wish I’d thought of it. But I didn’t. I’ve never taken a course in sign language.”
“You wouldn’t have to,” I said, a little stunned as I listened to myself. Sheer guesswork, all of it. “There are videotapes, Web sites—or you could have gotten a tutor, without telling your husband. Maybe you decided to put that off until you’d learned enough to be confident about your skills. Maybe you wanted to wait for just the right moment, and then surprise him.”
“That would have been nice,” she said. “But I didn’t do it.” She paused, rubbing her hands together to warm them, her left hand lingering to caress the sapphire on her right ring finger. “And even if I did—even if I do understand a little sign language—what difference would that make?”
No point in holding back now. “You don’t like Rita Hanson,” I said. “The prosecutor called her an administrative assistant; you called her ‘my husband’s secretary.’ You said ‘my husband’ a lot. I think you said ‘James’ just once, when you described hearing that he was dead, when you wanted the jury to feel sorry for you. The rest of the time it was ‘my husband,’ as if you were claiming him.”
“He was my husband,” she pointed out. “I didn’t have to claim him.”
“Maybe you felt you did,” I said. “Maybe he didn’t appreciate you enough; maybe he didn’t realize how bright and observant you are, how quickly you pick things up. And that afternoon.” I shook my head. “I can just imagine how I would have felt.”
She stopped walking and turned to face me. “Go ahead,” she said. “Tell me everything you’re thinking.”
I forced myself to meet her eyes. “Maybe your husband and Rita said—signed—more than you said they did. Maybe they didn’t just sign that he’d have to work late. Maybe they signed that she’d join him after his work was done. Maybe they signed all that, right in front of you, and you understood it all.”
She pressed her lips together, and shook her head, and looked away.
“Or maybe not all,” I said. “Maybe you understood just enough to know they were closer than they should have been—just as he was too close to that teacher in California. Maybe you understood just enough to know they’d be meeting that night, and had so little respect for you that they thought it was a joke to sign about it while you were there. I think that would have hurt you; I think it would have made you angry. Maybe you were so hurt and angry that you had to get away, to go home and think. Maybe it made you hurt and angry enough to go to his office that night.”
Victoria Douglass looked at her watch. “We should get back to court,” she said, and turned around, gathering her collar together to shield her throat against the wind. “Frank Bixby has a decent alibi—did you know that? It’s not perfect, but it’s better than Rita’s, or mine. Nobody can prove I wasn’t home that night, but I can’t prove I was. The coroner thinks my husband died before eight, and she didn’t get to that bar until eight thirty. She could have killed him, panicked, and run to the bar to patch together a partial alibi.”
“Or she could have gone to his office at eight and found his body,” I said. “She could have been too afraid of being suspected to contact the police—that could be why she ran to the bar, why she still won’t admit to the affair. But maybe now she wonders if you understood that conversation she and your husband signed that day. Maybe she wonders if you came back to confront him, got into an argument, picked up that barbell in a moment of anger, and hit him in the back of the head.”
“That would put her in a difficult position,” Victoria Douglass observed. “She’d suspect me of killing her lover, but she wouldn’t have proof—and she’d be too afraid of being suspected herself to say anything. That might explain why she slipped insults into her testimony. She might think that w
as her only safe way of striking back at me.”
“And then Sandra covered those insults up,” I said. “Maybe Rita knows Sandra well enough to figure she’d probably do that. Maybe not. Either way, you’re right. If that’s how things happened, Rita’s in a difficult position.”
We reached the courthouse steps. She turned to face me again. “You’re in a difficult position, Jane. I realize that, and I’m sorry. Those discrepancies—you could tell the judge, but they wouldn’t sound like anything to him. He’s known Sandra for years, and he doesn’t know you at all. He’d probably dismiss what you say and never want to work with you again. But it must be eating away at you—you were the only other hearing person in court who understands sign, the only one who knows what Sandra was doing. If you don’t speak up, who will? Who can? But if you do speak up, what good will it do?”
I looked at her hopelessly. “If I told him what you’ve said to me—“
“I haven’t said much,” she pointed out. “If you go to the judge, I’ll deny saying anything at all. You’re a good interpreter, Jane—and if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll deny it, I’ll deny I have any way of knowing if you’re good or not. You could help a lot of people if you keep interpreting. If you sabotage your career by going to the judge, you’ll waste all your skills, all your compassion, by saying things no one will believe. And what will you accomplish? There’s no evidence against me. You won’t send me to prison—if you think I deserve to go there, and I don’t think you do.”
“But Frank Bixby,” I began. “If he gets convicted—”
“He won’t,” she cut in. “There’s no real evidence against him, either. I was amazed when he got charged—amazed, and very sorry. He encouraged student protests, he and James exchanged angry words about a minor administrative matter on the day of the murder, he had a key to the building and a not-quite-perfect alibi. That’s not enough for a murder conviction. And his attorney’s doing a good job of diffusing suspicion. Right now, half the jurors suspect me, and half suspect Rita. You saw that, didn’t you? You saw it in their eyes.”
“And in their hands,” I admitted. “Yes. I saw it.”
“He’ll be acquitted,” she said. “And if by some chance he isn’t, go to his attorney. Tell him about those tiny discrepancies in Sandra’s voicing. He’ll file an appeal, the videotapes will be reviewed, and any problems will come to light. But there probably won’t be any need for that. Probably, Frank Bixby will be acquitted, and most people will assume my husband was killed by some anonymous burglar. So why throw your career away by making a futile gesture now?”
I lifted my hands uselessly. “I want to make sure justice is done.” It sounded childish, even to me.
She smiled kindly. “That’s not up to you,” she said. “Or, thank God, to me. You have just one specific job to do here. Once it’s done, you can go home and rest easy.”
I shook my head. “It doesn’t seem right.”
“No,” she agreed. “But I’ve thought about this a lot, Jane. If the jury acquits Frank Bixby, if no one else is charged, if the full truth doesn’t come out, maybe it won’t be justice, exactly. But maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe it’s the best we can do in a world where the full truth is so hard to know. Maybe all we can hope for is to make sure no one’s punished unless the evidence is absolutely clear. And it isn’t absolutely clear—not even to you, not even now. And justice? The only man I’ll ever love is dead, and I’ll have to live the rest of my life without him, and with the knowledge of what I did—or didn’t do.”
I looked down at my hands. They were red with cold, numb, immobile. “So I should just go back to court,” I said, “and do nothing.”
She put a sympathetic hand on my shoulder, just as Sandra had, less than half an hour ago. “No, do your one job,” she said. “Do it well. Maybe justice will triumph—or something reasonably close to justice.”
She walked away. By the time I got back to court, she was already in her seat. The first witness for the defense would be a deaf guidance counselor from the school, who would testify that Frank Bixby had dinner with him on October fifteenth and didn’t leave the restaurant until seven forty. Sandra stood by the defendant’s table, poised and professional.
Spectators filed in; the prosecutor entered with her team, then the defense attorney; a bailiff brought in the defendant. Another bailiff called out, Sandra signed the formulaic phrases, we all rose to our feet, the judge came to the bench and told us to be seated.
As everyone around me sat down, I hesitated and remained standing. I looked over at Victoria Douglass. She sat directly across the aisle from me, hands folded, eyes respectfully forward. Sandra’s eyebrows peaked with resentment. The judge gave me a quizzical look.
I sat down, and the defense attorney called his witness.
Copyright © 2010 B. K. Stevens
Author’s note: I am deeply indebted to Sarah Gershone, N.I.C., who first suggested the idea for this story. In addition to supplying all the expertise about sign language and the subtleties of interpreting, Ms. Gershone, a nationally certified American Sign Language interpreter, consulted at every stage about plot, characters, dialogue, and other elements. This story could not have been written without her many contributions. ——B.K.S.
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Fiction
LOVE AND DEATH
MICHAEL Z. LEWIN
Spurred by boredom, Salvatore Lunghi rolled the chair from behind the office desk to a place by the office window. He watched the traffic on Bath’s Walcot Street below.
The cars were hardly moving. People on the pavement couldn’t be seen beneath their umbrellas which were black, black and—whoops there was a blue one. It all seemed like a painting of what was inside his head. Nothing in there was moving. He had no woman he was interested in. His life had little color.
It was all also typical of this awful—cold, wet, dark—summer. Where was global warming when you needed it? Salvatore sighed. How had his life brought him to this place when he was the son and brother who had carved his own path. He had resisted relentless pressures to join the family detective business, becoming a painter instead. Yet here he was, in the agency office, minding the silent phone, painting nothing. What had happened?
He rolled the chair back to the desk, not even detouring to visit the kettle. He wouldn’t have minded a cup of coffee but not the instant rubbish that was available. His family was Italian, for crying out loud. Couldn’t they lay on an espresso machine? But no. If he wanted real coffee he had to go down the street to Harriett’s Café.
Or settle for tea. Gina, his brother’s wife, preferred tea, so the makings of a decent cuppa were always available in the office. And fair enough, the office side was mostly Gina’s terrain. And Gina worked hard.
Not just in the business. For a start she had her in-laws upstairs and nobody could call Mama or the Old Man easy. Then there was Angelo and their two kids. And with her sister-in-law living in the same house, too, Gina was a saint.
Salvatore sighed again. Gina and Angelo were at the Crown Court in Bristol for the rest of the week, key witnesses in a fraud case that had occupied them for the last six months. Which is how Salvatore came to be recruited to mind the office.
Although if he really got cabin fever he could recruit his father to fill in for a bit. But calling for the Old Man was an option of last resort. It would take longer to set up than it was worth. “You think I don’t know how? Huh!” his father would say about all the things he didn’t know how to do these days, what with the new technologies.
And Salvatore was being paid for his time. Which meant he’d make the rent. Last month’s rent, to be accurate. It’s just that sometimes the cost of money felt too great.
Life was a bitch at the moment. Not happy and carefree like it used to be. Even the women he met in the local pubs and clubs weren’t as light hearted as they used to be. Take the blonde from last night. Lovely, sure. And funny and clever.
But with two kids and two exes? Talk about baggage . . . Where were the blank-canvas twenty-year-olds of yesteryear?
Hanging around with blank-canvas twenty-year-old boys. Or thirty-year-old boys. Because face it, Salvatore told himself, you’re not as young as you used to be either. Or without baggage, despite having no ex-wives or children.
He wasn’t going to have to grow up and settle down, was he?
He rolled the chair back to the window. And just as he was in position to watch the street again something unexpected happened.
The office doorbell rang.
The Lunghi Detective Agency got very few clients who hadn’t made appointments first. Walk-ins happened, but they were rare. And walk-ins who looked like this one . . . Well!
Hel-lo, Salvatore said to himself as he followed her up the stairs.
He held the door open for her. As she entered the office he said, “Would you like a cup of tea?”
She turned and smiled—a gorgeous smile. “That would be great.”
Following her into the office Salvatore was struck by how gloomy it was. Books on shelves, filing cabinets . . . No fish tank. No paintings. That was a terrible oversight. What better introduction to a client could he have than for her to admire a painting and for him to be able to say, “Well, actually . . .”
Instead he said, “A cup of tea is the least we can offer after those stairs.” The Lunghis’ home and business premises were spread across the upper floors of a number of interconnected buildings. The ground-level shops provided stable rental income when agency business was slow and icing on the family cake when it wasn’t. “Do sit.” He gestured to the chairs facing the desk.
The woman was about thirty, tall but not skinny. She wore her rich black hair down to her shoulders. Her plain, quiet suit set off her natural coloring beautifully. Both clothes and demeanor said that she was something professional.
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 12/01/10 Page 3
