False Witness

by Uhnak, Dorothy

  Jim Barrow was a large bear-type man, the kind who probably never in his life had to get involved in personal violence. Just his size, his presence, would discourage any challenger. He was a gentle man: strong, warm, reassuring. I leaned into him for a minute, grateful that I could do this. It was one of those woman-perks and I was grateful for it.

  His arm turned me from the spectacular red and white horror.

  “Gee, I thought you knew, kid. I would have prepared you a little. Her other injuries are pretty bad. This guy came on like Attila the Hun, at least. From what I got so far, he slugged her hard enough to break the jawbones both sides of her face, her cheekbones, several of her teeth.” His strong pushing led us back into the living room where we both stared at the mess and Jim released me and pointed into the kitchen. “I’d say that somehow, probably in a state of shock, she managed to get back into the living room. Hence, this particular pool of blood. Then, I guess she wandered back inside the kitchen, where Mr. Doyle, the doorman, and the two uniformed men found her. She would have strangled if that young cop hadn’t reacted fast.”

  “Strangled? She would have strangled?”

  “Oh,” Jim Barrow said softly. “I didn’t tell you about her other ... injury.”

  “My God, besides rape and sodomy and dismemberment and broken face bones and teeth, Jim. Besides all that, what the hell else could he have done to her?”

  “Well, this she might have done to herself. No, not really, I mean during the course of the struggle. She put up a hell of a fight.” Jim rolled his lower lip between his teeth, then pantomimed a blow to his chin. “Bit her lower lip off,” he said.

  CHAPTER 2

  TIMOTHY DOYLE WAS A lovely man with a Mickey Rooney face and thick white theatrically long hair. He watched me carefully as I examined the titles of the paperbacks that filled three shelves on the wall of the little cubby just off the entrance vestibule. His shrewd bright blue eyes sparkled at my surprise.

  He had impressed me properly and we sat across the tiny table from each other, hands wrapped around mugs of tea.

  “I hope it’s not too sweet, my dear. I lace it with honey and lemon that I prepare special for the energy it gives. Not with your standard Irishman booze. I’m your oddball, sober, non-drinking non-stereotype, though that dummy Arthur Watsizname out there keeps asking wasn’t I maybe off dozin’ or boozin’ and missed seein’ this ... attacker leave the building.”

  “I’ve just glanced at your statement. Now you tell me. Don’t worry about exact times or anything. Not right now. Right now, I just want to hear you tell me.”

  He nodded and took one noisy sip of tea, held it in his mouth for a moment, then swallowed.

  “Ms. Dawson came home from the studio at her usual time, maybe one-twenty, one-thirty or so. The studio limo brought her.”

  He hesitated.

  “Okay, she was brought home by the studio limo. You took her up to the eighth floor. Alone at this time?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Alone. About fifteen minutes later,” he waved a hand, “as you said, you can check the times with my statement—well, she buzzed the elevator and I went up and brought her down.”

  “Do you always escort passengers? No one rides up or down alone?”

  “That’s exactly right. It’s an old-fashioned building; nothing automatic or modern. We just do things as we’ve done things all along. Now, then: she was dressed in her jogging clothes. Navy blue outfit with the green and white stripes; light blue fluffy knit hat and scarf—angora, is it? the kind of fluffy that gets all over you.”

  Noted.

  “How did she seem to you? Her mood.”

  “Tense. Tight. Wound up.”

  “Say anything to you?”

  “Not a word; nothing. Nor I to her. So off she goes. I held the door open and she started off to the right, toward the Circle.”

  “How far did you watch her go?”

  He shook his head. “That was it. Just the direction: toward the Circle. Okay. It’s about two-thirty now and she’s back. And she’s got a runner with her.”

  I took a deep breath. Timothy Doyle described him to me.

  “I’m five-nine, so I measure everyone up or down from me, as I’m a middle-sized man, you might say. He was close to six feet, give or take an inch.” He held up his hand, interrupting himself. “Most important fact: he was a white man.”

  “All right. What did he look like? Light hair, dark hair, color of his eyes? Just in your own words, Mr. Doyle.”

  “I never examined his face, Ms. Jacobi. I never even took more than a quick glance. I noticed his white hands. I could say only that he was white and that is exactly all I can say about what he looked like.” Sadly, he added, “I could not identify him at all, Ms. Jacobi, as I did not look at his face.”

  Terrific. A wonderful dream witness; but he had not looked at the perpetrator’s face. Mr. Doyle had been, as always, discreet.

  “Did they talk about anything in particular in the elevator, Mr. Doyle?”

  He closed his eyes for a moment; his wide forehead crumpled with thought. He shook his head.

  “They never said a word, Ms. Jacobi. Not a single word. Neither him nor her; nor did I. Beyond maybe a nodding acknowledgment, you know, when I let them in, ‘Ms. Dawson, ma’am.’ It wouldn’t have been the thing, do you understand, for me to have given the man the once-over.”

  “All right, then. You took them up to the eighth floor. Neither of them spoke to you or to each other. They got off and headed for her apartment and you went back down to your desk. And then?”

  And then about an hour or so later, the light on his switchboard flashed and flashed, on and off sporadically. He plugged in to answer Sanderalee’s summons and heard the terrible sounds. Sounds that he’d never heard before, but so terrible that he had not a moment’s doubt of disaster.

  “It’s a strange and funny thing, but I had a kind of déjà vu experience,” he told me with solid simplicity. “I felt a premonition. I heard the sounds coming from that poor girl’s telephone and without even thinking about it, I went right to the front door and as if it was all arranged, there was a patrol car parked not twenty feet away. It’s not a usual thing; I doubt it’s ever been just at that spot. Anyway, I just called out to them to come quickly. I guess something in my voice told them this was serious. They came. Two young patrolmen. Oh, so very young; the older of the two not more than twenty-five or -six, but the youngster maybe twenty-two or -three, poor lad. Not prepared for what we walked into. As if you could prepare for such a sight. But anyway ...”

  I held up my hand and he waited politely. “You went with them, into the elevator, right? You, in effect, left the door unguarded, right?”

  He drew himself up stiffly, vaguely insulted. “Yes, in effect.”

  “Mr. Doyle, you and the patrolmen went up to the eighth floor and got off the elevator. From that point on, tell me everything you saw. Everything you heard. Slowly.”

  He crossed himself swiftly; I wondered when was the last time he’d done that. It seemed an act of superstition rather than of faith.

  “Ah, Jesus God, it was that terrible.” His brogue went thick and soft; almost a different voice—a different man. His bright blue eyes clouded over; his tongue licked dry lips and his large, strong hand squeezed the tea mug tightly, then trembled as he set it on the small table. He looked directly at me, but he was seeing the eighth floor: the apartment that reeked of Sanderalee’s agony.

  “At first, we couldn’t find her, you know. We heard the noise, the soft groaning, like a wee animal; softer even, like a hurt little bird. And of course, I realized and I told the policemen: the kitchen. That’s where the intercom phone is and she’d been calling down and that’s where she’d be. We walked right through that room, the living room, right through, right past all that upset, the chairs knocked over, the things pushed aside. The blood.”

  He stopped speaking.

  “There was a great deal of blood, Mr. Doyle. Yes. I saw that mys
elf. It must have been very shocking for you to walk in on that. And Sanderalee, Mr. Doyle. Tell me. Tell me.”

  His eyes glazed. “There she was, you see, that poor child, all broken, all ... broken, all torn and bleeding, everything covered with blood and her hand, her poor hand was clutching the telephone like a vise.” He blinked and said to me, “It was hard to realize then, what we were seeing, how terrible it was. How hurt she’d been. Only her eyes seemed alive: her eyes, so wide-open, dear God, what her eyes had seen. And the poor younger cop, the twenty-two or twenty-three-year-old, Christ, he went whiter than the walls and the older policeman, he took over and he said, ‘Petey, get on the phone in the other room and get an ambulance’ and then ... I guess he realized what neither of us, the younger one or I, had realized. He said to me ... funny, this policeman’s voice was so strong and so calm. He took charge, very snappy like—like a soldier—he said to me, ‘Pop, you find a plastic bag in one of the cupboards here and you fill it with ice from the freezer. Just do it,’ he said, although I didn’t realize why. Like ‘boil water, the baby’s coming.’ ” Timothy Doyle laughed. It was a nervous, inappropriate laugh and we both knew it but he couldn’t help it. He laughed a little more; then he coughed and put his head down. When he raised his face, there were long running tears trickling down his cheeks. I reached out and pressed his arm. He was trembling.

  “Mr. Doyle. You did that, what the policeman told you to do? The ice, the plastic bag?”

  “Oh yes. I did that. And then the younger cop came back in and said the ambulance was on its way and then there was a terrible gagging sound. Yes. That’s what it was: a dying sound. Ms. Dawson was strangling right there on the floor and the three of us looking down at her. And the younger of the policemen, white-faced and shaken, he knelt down and just, it seemed to me anyway, he covered her face with his, he was face down to her. I couldn’t tell, of course, but I knew anyway, he was helping her to breathe and ... he looked up all of a sudden and—” Mr. Doyle stopped speaking.

  He put his face in his hands and his shoulders heaved convulsively. I dug into my pocketbook and came up with a wad of tissues, which I separated: half for him, half for me. I felt a wave of sympathetic sobbing deep inside my chest, which is where it would have to stay for now. That’s all I needed: to sit and get hysterical with my witness.

  “Okay, Mr. Doyle. Take a deep slug of that tea of yours. Okay. Tell me, Mr. Doyle.”

  He regained control. It was even worse than when he’d been emotional. He spoke in a dead steel voice; by rote, he described the indescribable.

  “When the young policeman tried to help her to breathe, he realized there was something blocking her windpipe, or whatever. He ... put his mouth over hers and sucked hard and then he raised his face and spit something into his hand. At just about that moment, the medics arrived. They burst into the apartment. They took one look and thought the young policeman was wounded. His face was covered with blood. His mouth ... and then he looked at what was in his hand. It ... it was what had blocked the girl’s breathing. He screamed. The young policeman. He leaped up as though an electric prod had touched him.” Mr. Doyle studied his clasping and twining fingers for a moment and then said softly, “It was her lip, you see, the flesh that she had bitten off. It had come loose and slipped into her throat and he sucked it out and cleared her breathing passage. And saved her life, if the poor girl will live after all that’s happened. And the policeman, he suddenly keeled over with his hands clutching his stomach, frantic as to where he could ... he was convulsed, you see, and my God, he didn’t want to add to ... I grabbed his arm and turned him to the kitchen sink. Now maybe I destroyed some evidence, I hope to God not, but I turned on the cold water and sloshed the boy’s face and washed away the vomit from the sink. And from his face. And the blood from his mouth.”

  “And then what, Mr. Doyle?”

  “And then, they took over is all. The medics. She was breathing with short gasping sounds and they bundled her up and took her out on a stretcher. And then. Yes. Then the older one, the older patrolman, he helped the medic pry the telephone receiver from—from her—her hand and ...”

  “And put it into the plastic bag you’d filled with ice?”

  He nodded.

  “From the moment you saw her until they took her away on the stretcher, did she say a word? Anything that sounded like a word?”

  “Not a word, ma’am. Just a small baby sound, a sighing when she breathed. Not a word.”

  Okay. We’d gotten the shock stuff over with; he’d survived it. It was out in the open. Now. Backtrack.

  “Mr. Doyle. When you took Sanderalee Dawson and this man up in the elevator, and they didn’t speak at all, and you didn’t look directly at either of them, where did you look?”

  He closed his eyes tightly, then snapped them open. “At his feet. At his running shoes. He was wearing a navy blue runner’s suit. I said that in my report. But I’d forgotten about the shoes.”

  “What about the shoes?”

  “They were ... different. Not your usual Adidas or Nikes. They were different. I’ve never seen shoes exactly like that before.”

  “Mr. Doyle, are you familiar with running shoes?”

  “I am. In this building alone, I can’t tell you how many of them run. It’s the thing now, you know, and they get all decked out just so. Dear God, I wish I could tell you more, but just that one thing: his shoes were ... different. Special.”

  “Okay. We’ll get some catalogues to you. Maybe they were imported or something. It might be very important, Mr. Doyle.” I stood up.

  “Mr. Doyle, did you see this man come back downstairs? Did you see him again, after bringing him up to the eighth floor?”

  “No, miss. He never came through the lobby.”

  There was a back door—a service exit that opened outward; it had a safety lock so that it could not be opened from the outside. It backed onto an alley. Bloodstains had been found at the door, which had been shoved open and left ajar.

  “Mr. Doyle, thank you for the tea, and for all your time. I will probably come back and talk with you again.” We walked into the small entrance hall and I looked up at the high ceiling for the first time. There was a lovely, shining crystal chandelier hanging from a gleaming brass chain. Dimly, I could make out angels on the ceiling, frolicking in a large circle.

  “I’d like to really take a good look at Holcroft Hall. I’ve passed it many times through the years, but never really looked at it.”

  “I can give you its long and interesting past, Ms. Jacobi,” Timothy Doyle told me. “This place here, it’s the real genuine article, Ms. Jacobi. You come back another day and I’ll tell you,” he said, love and pride in his voice.

  Bobby had his car ready at the curb and we headed toward Roosevelt Hospital. The morning light was grayish blue, dampish, raw with a March wind that had played around with Bobby’s yellow hair. A farmboy’s cowlick stood up dead center, defying the big-city hairstylist’s efforts. His handsome face was drawn and thoughtful. The scattering of freckles over the bridge of his nose was ridiculous: a man of thirty-two with freckles. Huck Finn. Bobby Jones. He sucked on the corner of his mouth, which activated two deep cheek dimples. We stopped for a red light, and he turned to me, his honest, open, midwestern face astonished at the evil one human being had visited on another.

  “My God, Lynne. My Lord, what he did to her.”

  “They don’t do things like that in Lincoln, Nebraska, do they, Bobby Jones?”

  “Except in wartime, I don’t think they do things like that anywhere in the world, Lynne.”

  I smiled sweetly and then asked him, “Bobby, dear, have you ever heard of a mass murderer named Charlie Starkweather? I do believe he was a near neighbor of your’n.”

  CHAPTER 3

  WITHIN THREE MINUTES OF our arrival at the Roosevelt Hospital Emergency Unit we learned that Sanderalee Dawson had been transferred by ambulance to New York Hospital for special surgery. Within the next three minutes,
it became crystal clear to me that a prosecutor’s nightmare was unfolding in the large public waiting room.

  In the center of the room, Deputy Police Commissioner in Charge of Public Relations Fred Mandell stood beaming and nodding and grinning and becoming serious and dramatic by turns, in response to his former colleagues from two of the major national television networks.

  “Want to try that again, Freddie?”

  “Turn the kid in to the camera, Fred. Damn. I’m not picking up on the blood enough.”

  Deputy Police Commissioner Fred Mandell was not a police officer. He had never been a police officer and he could never begin to qualify as a police officer. Yet he took his high appointed role as Public Relations Commissioner very much to heart. Rumor was he carried a pearl-handled .32 and even knew how to use it. He was handsome, personable and went out of his way to accommodate the cameramen assigned both from the networks and from the newspapers. He was posing and positioning one of my primary witnesses, the young patrolman who had apparently saved Sanderalee Dawson from strangling on her own lip.

  I had spotted a small empty office on our way in and I told Bobby Jones, “Get that jerk over here right away. And get that young police officer off to a corner and don’t let him open his mouth—not to show his bloody fangs or to make one more remark.”

  Deputy Police Commissioner Fred Mandell approached me with a pleasant expression, his arms opening wide for one of those European side-to-side embraces with kisses flung into the air. I slid away from him and slammed the door closed. The puzzled, slightly worried expression wiped the stupid grin from his face.

  “Been holding a little free-for-all press conference out there, have you, Fred?”

  “Lynne, Lynne. They are our best friends in the long run. We’ve got to keep them on our side.”

  “How much did you let that poor dopey-looking kid with the blood on his mouth say?”

  “Hey, Lynne, wasn’t that kid something?” Fred shuddered. “Yuk, imagine sucking out a thing like that. And he’s able to laugh and clown around about it now, just like it’s an everyday thing. He couldn’t have more than a year on the job, and he handled himself beautifully.”