I noted that she spoke these words with her eyes fixed deeply into the camera’s lens while at the same time showing that fetching dimpled smile and raising her slender fingers in a small wave, a gesture of Hello there, y’all. She could do these three things all at once because a good born-again Christian must master such choreography in order to snooker people in.
Like everyone else on death row, Rona Leigh may have found Jesus, but her conversion wasn’t the real reason why a cavalcade of white knights—from the pope to Jerry Falwell—were charging in to save her. The real reason was that she was a pretty woman. Chivalry had come into play as it always does with a pretty woman, arms full of bundles, trying to open a door. A man will knock himself out to help her. If the woman’s ugly, she can have two broken arms and the same man will barge past and let the door slam in her face.
Ergo, if a pretty woman is an object placed on a pedestal, how does that square with murdering one in cold blood while two dozen people watch the killing, listening attentively for the death rattle, like they’re second-graders waiting for instructions on how to make art out of macaroni. It didn’t square. Let us take our lesson from Jesus, who stopped a gang of fellows from stoning an adulteress to death. An adulteress who was, I’ll bet, pretty. Jesus was a gentleman.
So the upstanding men of religion using the example of Jesus Christ had all come banging on the door of the good governor of Texas, beseeching him to stop the public stoning of Rona Leigh Glueck. But the handsome good-ol’-boy governor found himself in a bind. There were seven other women on death row in his state, and all of them were black. How ever would he get around denying their pleas for clemency if he granted Rona Leigh the stay she requested?
Just a week or so ago my assistant and I were chatting about this very development. She’d said, “Hell, it’s all feminist backlash. Just another way of keepin’ us in our place. Let’s save girl killers from execution because, after all, they have nothing in the brains department so they aren’t responsible for their numbskull behavior. If the governor of Texas was a right-wing extremist instead of this new-style Republican we’re seein’—happy-go-lucky instead of…” She searched for the words.
“Instead of a mannerless goon,” I suggested.
“Yeah, instead of an asshole—then Reba Lou might have a shot of slipping out of the noose.”
“Rona Leigh.”
“Whichever.”
I’d brought up Rona Leigh with my buddy Joe Barnow. Joe is chief field adviser at the Department of Guys, the ATF: Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. He said, “Clemency for Jesus-finding is in violation of the first amendment, separation of church and state. Also, Poppy old girl, just who should get to decide if a prisoner really has found Jesus or is faking it?”
Then Joe became a redneck prisoner on death row. He said, “Ah b’lieve I have found Jesus. He’s right there!” Joe pointed dramatically toward a big plant draped with twinkly lights standing in the corner of his living room, romantic decorator that he is.
I shaded my eyes and searched. “Where? Ah ain’t seein’ Jesus.”
He grabbed me and turned me to the plant. “Right yonder beside that mesquite tree. Ah found Him! Ah have found the Lord. Now set me free!”
I squinted, and then I smacked his shoulder. “Y’all did not find Him. That there’s a possum!”
It was Spike, his cat.
Then I left our much-loved make-believe role-playing game behind because I got depressed. “Shit, Joe, imagine some African American dude wearing one of those little white caps telling a clemency board, ‘I have found Allah!’ And all the board people mumbling to each other, ‘Says he found what?’”
He laughed. I didn’t. Joe didn’t know I was depressed. There are some aspects of my thoughts I keep from him.
All the same, here was Dan Rather talking to Rona Leigh Glueck as though she were a child instead of a condemned prisoner, convicted of murdering two people in cold blood, fighting for her life, and I was finding I understood his going all soft. It was not just those big eyes of hers blinking innocently, it was the pre-makeover Paula Jones matted bangs, a drooping lifeless clump of chemically permed, dyed-black curls. A style that makes a woman look defective and in need of a good man’s charity, even though bad men see those same fake curls as a neon sign flashing the message: Anybody want a blow job?
Dan Rather, as we all know, is the former kind of guy.
I leaned back into my sofa. We just don’t have that hairdo in DC.
I looked to the file on my lap and took out the envelope with the crime scene photos, pictures of forms and objects—the bodies, the mattress, a phone—all coated with dark red blood.
In a far corner untouched were ten beer cans, eight down, two upright, a balled-up pair of socks among them. I looked for some forensic notes. None were in reference to what I guessed—that the victims had set up a makeshift bowling alley before they were killed, the game interrupted just after one of them left a seven-ten split. They’d been playing before they would have gone ahead and had sex—just before they would be murdered—rolling the ball from the mattress to their tenpins. Reminded me of Joe pretending to be a prisoner, with me jumping right in as straight man, the kind of game we played before settling in.
At a murder scene, one element of the horror and gore, the pathos, is what causes maybe one tear to leap to our eyes before we can head the rest off.
I went back to the bodies. One didn’t really look like a body; its torso had been axed flat. That was Melody, the picture taken after the ax had been removed.
Dan Rather distracted me. I looked up again. He was wishing Rona Leigh well. She smiled calmly, gave that little wave, and then Dan said good night to his audience, looking completely abashed as if he couldn’t understand how anyone would want to see his sweet little guest dead.
I turned off the TV. In the light of the streetlamp—I don’t have any sort of blinds yet—I polished the fingernails on the other hand while I mused on it all. I was waving that hand in the air when I saw a naked man standing in front of me. Not entirely naked: The dial on his watch glowed green. He said, “You intend to get any sleep at all tonight?”
I said, “What in the world are you doing here?”
“You invited me.” He glanced at the green dial. “And about six hours ago we made love.”
“Oh, yeah. I forgot. I’m sorry, Joe.”
The pieces of furniture in my living room are a sofa to sit on and a coffee table to put my feet up. Plus the TV. I patted the cushion next to me. Joe sat down.
When Joe Barnow’s agents aren’t ferreting out smugglers and drug lords, they’re shooting and firebombing babies in Waco and Idaho with the help of the FBI, not my section. Joe says when a criminal resists arrest, threatens his agents with guns, lobs grenades at them, the responsibility for the repulsive results of the measures required to protect themselves lies with the criminals.
He says, “If those people want to hide behind their babies’ cribs while they’re trying to kill ATF agents, they’re the ones who cause the deaths of the innocents, not us. Rules of engagement. You want to engage us, learn the rules. Your choice, whether to be compliant or hostile, and if you pick hostile, get ready to find out that your house isn’t your castle after all.”
He doesn’t say, And I drink too much so I can keep saying shit like this. But then I still can’t live with myself so I drink some more. The man is a mess. I don’t hold it against him.
He put his feet up next to mine on the coffee table. I glanced at his lap. His relaxed state of affairs was too precious.
He glanced at my lap, too.
“Whose file?”
“Rona Leigh Glueck’s.”
“Why?”
“I couldn’t sleep. I just watched Dan Rather interview her. He inspired me to run downtown and get the file.”
“Poppy, you’ve got to learn to delegate—”
“I know, I know. But she’s got ten or eleven days left, depending on whether you call three A.M
. today.”
“Where does your interest lie, Agent Rice?”
“In her wrists. They’re as tiny as a child’s. How much does an ax weigh?”
“Depends on the ax.” He took the file from me and covered his lap, alas. He rifled through and took out a page. “Twenty-four pounds.”
“Fairly heavy, no?”
“But she was young and strong.”
“Young, yes; strong, no.” I reached over and took out the medical report. “Upon her arrest she was five feet two, eighty-eight pounds, and suffering from drug addiction, alcoholism, chlamydia, and malnutrition.”
He said, “Well, I weigh around one-eighty. You got a calculator?”
“Not on me.”
“Don’t get up. Twenty-four pounds is a little more than a quarter of her body weight at the time. A quarter of mine is forty-five pounds. I could swing a forty-five-pound ax, no problem.”
“Your ratio isn’t figuring in the malnutrition, disease, all the rest. And what strength would you need to pull the ax back out of a chest if it’s sunk in all the way through, lodged in the ribs and breastbone, say? Probably even more.”
“Probably a lot more.” He shuffled through the pictures and reports. “A dozen chops. Have you read this cop’s notes?”
I looked over. “Not yet.”
He read what I was to hear the next day from Dispatcher Melvin Hightower. “Cop says when she confessed she was laughing. She said she enjoyed killing … let’s see … Melody Scott. Said she had a pop every time the ax hit home. What’s that, an orgasm?”
“Must be what they call them in Texas. But she was lying. Bragging.”
“She was?”
“Murderers in a frenzy don’t take a break to concentrate on having orgasms. It’s myth anyway, multiple orgasms. One, and your heart’s pounding, your muscles are contracting, and you have to struggle to catch your breath. A few in a row would blow the top of your head off.”
“Want to get in a frenzy and try?”
I picked up the file from his lap and looked. A change had come over Joe. We had nice frenzied sex there on the sofa. On the sofa and on the floor too, and during some of it we were apparently airborne. But I couldn’t concentrate. I faked the orgasm. Joe didn’t mind, though, because he said he never knows the difference anyway and because I told him it can be fun to fake an orgasm. One time we were making love and he started making all these noises and doing God knows what and I asked him what was going on and he told me he was faking an orgasm. I laughed so hard I had hiccups for an hour. I do enjoy this man.
Now Joe went off to my bed. I put my Victoria’s Secrets back on and read a little more of the report. The little more I read was unbelievable. I went into my bedroom and got in with Joe. I felt bad waking him.
“Joe?”
“What, baby?”
“You faking sleep?”
“Yes.”
I put on the bedside lamp. “Joe, the jury sentenced Rona Leigh to death rather than life in prison because of the testimony of the prosecutor’s key witness”—I waved a paper I’d brought with me in front of his face—“a forensic physician. What the hell is that?”
“No such animal. You’re either a pathologist or a coroner.”
“That’s what I always thought. This expert witness said … let’s see … he said, ‘Diabolical effort and determination was necessary in order for the accused to keep pulling the ax out of Melody Scott’s chest in order to swing it again and again and again.’
“Now get this, Joe. When Rona Leigh’s defender questioned him as to how she managed to do such a thing, considering her weight and condition, he said glee gave her the strength, rather than muscle. Glee. Now there’s a forensic determination.”
I noticed Joe’s eyes were shut.
“Can I tell you more thing?”
He mumbled, “Sure.”
“The forensic physician topped off his testimony by telling the court that the evidence wasn’t entirely circumstantial. That Rona Leigh’s odor was still on the ax handle.”
His eyes opened. He said, “Objection,” and then he closed them again.
“I certainly hope there was an objection. Even so, the jury got to hear what he said.”
Jurors love doctors. They love expert coroners hired by the prosecution. They admire what they think is scientific evidence. That’s because they flunked high school chemistry just like the lawyers. People go into law because they can’t figure out the business end of a Bunsen burner. But here was a new one on me. A physician testifying in a court of law, under oath, that a killer’s odor was left on the evidence.
“Joe, pretrial, the public defender sent a letter to my lab when it was under the direction of my predecessor, may he die of leprosy. The defender wanted to know if someone of his client’s height, body weight, and physical condition was capable of committing the crime. He’d seen what I saw tonight on TV. A copy of the letter is in the fucking file, and it’s stamped INADEQUATE PROCEDURE. The original was returned unanswered, unless you count a rubber stamp as an answer. Son of a bitch.”
Joe patted my thigh with the strength of an ant. I let him sleep.
The crime lab had been an ongoing travesty for a very long time. Agents used to feel free to use rubber stamps at whim without taking the trouble to explain to querying law officers the procedures for filling out the proper forms when seeking assistance from the FBI. Those seeking assistance who were not deemed worthy of response never followed up, since public defenders like the one assigned to Rona Leigh were either inexperienced, incompetent, or burdened by unrealistic workloads.
I climbed out of bed, went back to my computer, and put case # 8037568-8233 at the top of my list. I would find out the answer Rona Leigh’s public defender didn’t get seventeen years ago from the FBI.
Then I got back in with Joe. He mumbled something.
“What, sweetie?”
“I’ll bet you’re figurin’ the boyfriend maybe did it.”
“Why not? Tells her she did it, she believes him, and then the cops remove any doubts that might crop up in her pathetic head. That way they kill two birds with one stone. Worked. I imagine the boyfriend must have been executed at some point.”
“I think I read he died in jail. Poppy, honey?”
“What?”
“Before you take this one on, see if there’s something else besides her weak physical condition. Just that won’t cut it.”
He was right. “I’ve got Dr. Glee.”
“One more besides. Three is always a convincing number.”
Three would happen the next day, when police dispatcher Melvin Hightower revealed a puppeteer.
I gazed at my ceiling. Joe’s breathing had become regular. I dropped the papers on the floor, switched off the light, slid down under the sheet, burrowed into Joe, and closed my eyes. I fell into a deep sleep. Three seconds later I heard the click of my clock radio, followed by the voice of Don Imus telling me the President was a moron.
2
After I had my chat with Melvin, the Houston police dispatcher, I went in to see my director. We meet fairly regularly and I keep him informed as to what I’m working on, while he counts on my assistant when he needs to reach me in the field. Once in a while he has a few ideas of his own as to who belongs on my list, and I respect that. Then there are the occasional favors we ask of each other.
Not too long after I started my new job, he figured I owed him a little something. He called me in.
“I need a week from you, Poppy.”
“When?”
“Now.”
He described a “special concern” of his boss. That would be the President. The President had a very dear friend who needed help. From the FBI. The dear friend was a Catholic cardinal—someone was dipping into his till.
I asked, “How come me? I don’t need to waste time swatting at gnats.”
“I know. But I have to have someone who won’t make a mistake and who will know to step lightly, since lightly is wh
at is so called for here.”
“Give him Auerbach. He’s the best technician we’ve got. That anybody’s got. He’s never made a mistake in his life. Tell him to wear sneakers instead of those gunboats he’s always clumping around in, and I’m sure—”
“You can take a man out of his gunboats, but you can’t—”
“Shit.”
“Poppy, we’re dealing with a powerful and prominent man here. One all politicians have utmost regard for. A household name, which makes things even stickier. Sometimes I have to balance all that in. Of course, you know that too. You’ll find the little Judas in their midst with no trouble.”
“Why don’t they handle Judas internally the way Jesus did?”
“They tried. They went to the Jesuits. The Jesuits suggested the FBI.”
“Too busy cracking Vatican bank scandals.”
“Apparently.”
He stood and handed me the report he’d received and called out to my back, “Thanks, Poppy.”
The household name was Beltrán María Cardinal de la Cruz y García, the recently named very colorful prelate of the Archdiocese of New York. The new pope had traveled to Miami in order to harvest the most conservative of conservatives and plant him on Fifth Avenue. After he’d been in residence for about a year, he was informed that someone had been helping himself to the contents of the collection plate to the tune of ten million dollars in twelve years.
I consulted with Auerbach. He got together the software I’d need. He said, “At least it’s New York. You’ll get to see a play or something.”
“Anything good on Broadway these days?”
He gaped at me as if I were speaking Swahili.
It’s hard to remember Auerbach doesn’t know everything.
I went to New York and was welcomed by the cardinal with so much grace that I forgave my director and got the software going then and there. In two minutes I’d set up a vertical balance sheet and watched where it refused to remain vertical. Typical Ponzi scheme: Replace stolen old money with new money and then fake the balances. I said to the cardinal, “Have we got any priests or staff living the high life? A deacon with a house in the Caymans? Secretary with gambling debts? Mistress holed up at the Plaza? Bastard children squirreled away in the suburbs?”
Love Her Madly Page 2
