“Now?”
“National Organization for Women.”
“Never heard of it. Ha. Go on.”
“It has jumper cables and a rocking chair in the back.”
“A rocking chair?”
“It was on its way to be fixed. A slat broke.”
“You know this car pretty well.”
“Yes.” The chair had belonged to his grandmother and then his mother. He had been nursed in it. His grandfather had even died in it, dropping his head to one side, spittle on his lips.
“How long will this take?” Peter hugged the phone with his chin, and found his briefcase.
“Give me a place to start.”
To answer Vinnie would be the first real transgression against Janice. Sleeping with Cassandra was wrong, but it didn’t violate the terms of the separation. Telling Vinnie to go ahead constituted his first infringement on Janice’s new autonomy. But he didn’t see any other way, short of hiring a private detective, who would take time to find and who would cost more money than he was currently able to pay. He himself could follow her home from work, but she would be wary that he would try that, and if he was caught, it would hurt his cause. What else? He could call up all Janice’s friends and try to worm it out of them, but that would be embarrassing, not necessarily successful, and certain to get back to her. Her phone couldn’t be traced. It had occurred to him that when the checks he gave Janice were returned to him by the bank, he might be able to figure out what neighborhood she was in, and then ask around a little. But that would be in a couple of weeks, and he didn’t have the patience. He was beginning to imagine things about Janice that upset him—sex, namely—and beginning to fear his own desperate nature.
“Try around the forty-two hundred block of Spruce, around there, days,” he finally answered. “Brick, three stories, side entrance.”
“You mean the woman’s shelter.”
“The location is supposed to be secret.”
“Not to me.” Vinnie sounded bored.
“Well, keep it to yourself. It’s secret for a good reason.”
“Right, right.”
“Try there days.” He emptied yesterday’s paperwork from his briefcase onto the desk.
“Yeah. Am I looking for a car or a driver?”
“Just let me know where the car is nights.”
“You can expect to hear from me shortly. And, Peter?”
“What?”
“Sorry your wife moved out.”
“Don’t fuck with me, Vinnie.”
He hung up. The office felt too small. Everything felt too small, including each minute—he was due in court in an hour, and would be unprepared. He suffered a capricious urge to dump all his trial preparation reports out the window, to let the intimate trash of other lives flutter through the corridors of buildings. Maybe a couple of sheets—police charging forms, ballistics, medical examiner’s report, any of it—would float up against Janice’s door, her window, wherever the hell she was staying. She would wake up one morning and see little Judy Warren’s picture blown flat against her window, and know that he, Peter, was not so evil, after all. Judy Warren’s corpse, photographed with dispassionate expertise by the police evidence team, showed, by virtue of its roasted shanks, the scalp shaved and blackened by heat, the body sprawled on charred furniture, that he, Peter Scattergood, was not evil. He was many things—insensitive, emotionally sloppy, selfish—but he was not evil, and this knowledge gave him a queer sense of resolve. Vinnie could help him out. Calling Vinnie was neither bad nor good, it was inevitable. Did Janice think he was some kind of fool? You don’t just let your wife run away, you go after her. He felt no ability to mediate on his own behalf. The only way through was to plunge as deeply and rapidly as he could. He was a very reasonable man, but reason was no longer relevant. He had lost control and now he must do anything he could to get it back. He was furious. Janice had left him and this he would never allow.
Chapter Five
ONE OF THE JURORS in the Robinson case, it turned out, had a sick ten-year-old boy and would not be able to make it to court until the afternoon. Such a delay was typical, and thus he would have a reprieve for a few hours before the closing arguments, which he still hadn’t outlined. But the Whitlock case wouldn’t allow him to prepare; the detectives kept calling. Wayman Carothers was not talking, of course, not without a lawyer. According to the senior detective, Carothers was sitting down at the Police Roundhouse at Eighth and Race with folded arms and a bored, fuck-you expression on his streetwise face. He’d dealt with police before. His attorney was in St. Croix, he’d told detectives, and he was expecting to be formally charged soon—either that or be set free.
The neighbor, Wanda Douglas, who said she remembered him standing outside the apartment of the dead couple had identified his face in the large mug-shot books. Now the detectives were stalling for time, checking into Carothers’s whereabouts on the night of the murders. Miss Douglas, a chronic insomniac, had decided to take the garbage to the apartment building’s trash chute, she had told detectives. Why had she decided to empty the trash then? Because during the day the janitor fired up the incinerator and bits of ash and smoke drifted up the chute into her face, she said. She thought it was after three a.m. but couldn’t be sure. A man had been standing at the door to the Whitlock apartment. Had he gone in? the police questioned. She didn’t know, maybe.
All she remembered was that he was breathing hard, a black man in his twenties in a long black coat. She thought she’d seen him around the neighborhood from time to time—he looked the same in his picture as he had the previous evening, she could say that, all right. He had keys in his hand. She thought she’d heard steps in the hall earlier in the night but couldn’t be sure. Miss Douglas had been sent home with strict instructions not to discuss the case with anyone, and to inform police if anyone threatened her or members of her family.
This was the beginning of a case, Peter thought, but not much. There were so many questions not asked, questions any defense attorney would seize on. How much light was there in the hall? How far away was the woman standing? Did she usually wear glasses and did she have them on? None of this information was there—the police had only asked the most cursory of questions. And for all anybody knew, the man letting himself into the apartment had only been there a minute. Maybe he hadn’t even gone into the apartment or had nothing to do with the murder. That Carothers had been identified within hours of the murders seemed almost impossible to believe, a lightning bolt of luck. And there was something else, Peter realized privately. A girl such as Johnetta Henry would have no reason to open a kitchen window in the dead of the night—it was too cold for her fatless body. And it was unlikely the apartment was too warm, not for three hundred dollars a month. If Carothers had in fact entered and left the apartment via the hallway, which was logical to assume since he’d been seen standing there with a key, then why was the window wide open?
More paperwork and information arrived, including a report describing the detainment of Wayman Carothers at his place of employment, a moving company in northeast Philadelphia. He had been taken in for custodial interrogation shortly before five A.M. while gassing up the moving van at the company loading dock. He was headed out of town on a two-day run to Pittsburgh. He had gone peaceably. “Suspect cooperative, and said nothing,” the typed report read. “Suspect appears to be alert and calm. Dressed in blue mover’s overalls, with work boots.”
Meanwhile, the preliminary analysis by the assistant medical examiner had placed the time of Johnetta Henry’s death as between two forty-five and three-thirty that morning, based on the progression of lividity. Algor mortis—body temperature at the time of examination—was less accurate, the report said, due to the lack of body fat and the open window near the body in the apartment, but confirmed the lividity finding. The formal write-up would take a while to be transcribed and delivered, but for now, this information would be assumed to be accurate. Whitlock was still being examined.
The cause of the girl’s death was two severe blows to the head with a blunt instrument, but it was also clear that she had been strangled in the struggle; her hyoid bone, just above the Adam’s apple, had been fractured. These injuries had occurred within at most a few minutes; it was conceivable that she lost consciousness while being strangled and then received the death blows to the head. There were no needle marks, no incisions, no deep bruises, no internal injuries. And though she was naked at the time of death, there were no signs of sexual abuse, no semen, no hair cuts into the vagina, nothing. She had not menstruated in at least several months, due to inadequate body fat. Though she was slightly anemic, the examiner concluded that she was quite healthy, with a strong heart and clear lungs. All internal organs appeared healthy and normal. Her muscle tone was excellent. The blows that killed her would have killed anybody and were meant to kill. Toxicology studies showed that the victim had no alcohol or narcotics in her bloodstream at the time, nor was there any evidence of chronic use of either. The examiner could find no blood, hair, or skin samples beneath her fingertips. There was a slight hematoma above one eye, but the examiner did not feel this was the result of a sharp blow; it was soft and shallow, more likely due to slumping forward against a wall or floor before her heart stopped beating. The victim had once given birth, not recently.
From detectives came the information that Johnetta Henry had last been seen leaving the University of Pennsylvania main library, where Whitlock had also been. Her fingerprints were all over the apartment, as were Whitlock’s. Five other fingerprints had been found in the apartment, but none of them matched Carothers’s. Friends said Johnetta often read in the library with Whitlock while he studied biology. They said she and Whitlock had been steady for over a year, though she was quite a bit older than he. She had worked at a variety of jobs—telephone sales, office support in the Mayor’s election campaign—and most recently as an aerobics instructor at a local gym. The gym was a known distribution point of illegal steroids, but the police didn’t feel she was involved. The consensus was that she was bright and determined but, until she met Whitlock, had received few opportunities for advancement. That she was devoted to him was unquestioned, and she had openly talked about the life they might have together as he climbed into the professional ranks. She planned to go with Whitlock when he attended medical school at Harvard. It was she who bought him the expensive clothes and dressed him well. Whitlock, for his part, was considered brilliant yet naive, a bit of a bookworm, well-meaning yet emotionally immature, outwardly idealistic but passive in most respects, and passionate only about science, but lost without Johnetta. She had been his first girlfriend, and it was probable he had been a virgin until he met her. There had been many men in her past but no one else in a long time. Friends remarked that the couple seemed mismatched; others said they thought she controlled him, or just knew what he needed. They had lived together about a year, with no apparent conflict. Friends interviewed by the police said he seemed happier than ever, and appeared comfortable with her coming with him to medical school the following autumn when he started his studies. His family agreed that he seemed happy but said they doubted she would have followed him to medical school.
How often these murders were lodged within the most mundane of details. One moment a girl is sitting in a library thumbing through Cosmo or some other magazine preying upon female insecurities, looking at the nail polish ads or reading about how to build a happy relationship, and a few hours later confronting her killer. Did the victim ever have a moment to reflect upon the sudden shift of realities? Or was the moment so elemental, so engaging of the instinct that such rumination was impossible? Johnetta Henry had left the library and gone home alone, to wait for a call from her mother. What could be more mundane?
And this was all they had so far. None of it, Peter saw, explained why the police had taken an hour to show up. Before he was due in court again, he decided to talk it over with Berger, who, back from Harrisburg, he found in the men’s room baring his teeth in the mirror.
“Filing them down?” Peter said.
“Bad gums, same as my mother.” Berger shook his head. “Destiny.”
“Or bad flossing. How was your trip?”
“I got there. Her lawyer called last night and said her medication cycle meant she was most alert at five in the morning, don’t ask me why. I got her to say what we needed and took the train home. If she dies tomorrow, her words live on.”
Berger, Peter had decided long ago, had been a smart-alecky, jitterbug shortstop know-it-all kind of boy. Pesky sharp nose, quick to argue, with an eagerly destructive intelligence. The years in the D.A.’s office had worked their wear, however. As Berger grimaced before the mirror, Peter could see that Berger’s face was shifting, dropping, the skin under the jaw heavier and thicker, the hair thinning to a sparse, unhappy bristle on top. In the seven years they had known each other, folds had appeared ever so subtly above Berger’s eyes, and his cheeks had become lower and heavier by the thickness of a new legal pad. With this change had come a deepening of character toward melancholic sarcasm—Berger no longer cared how smart he was, for his intelligence had only made him see things he wished he hadn’t.
“You have any idea what those operations cost?”
“I asked you if you flossed, motherfucker.”
“Never. Who has time for preventive maintenance?” Berger asked, lifting his high freckled forehead. “Hey, incidentally, Hoskins pulled an LBJ on me about two minutes ago. He came in and sat on the can and started giving me orders—”
“What did he say?”
Berger turned around, his face grave. He checked the door. “He said not to give you any help on the Whitlock murder.”
“What?”
“Maybe that means he wants me to help you. Maybe it means he doesn’t want me to, and is making it sound like he’s giving you a test to see if you can fly on your own. Maybe he’s trying to split us up.”
“You know what?” Peter said. “Fuck him.”
“Exactly. Anyway, have you heard from Janice?”
“Bergs, I’m getting worried. I don’t like this.”
“Get a lawyer. That’s all I can tell you.”
Peter stared into the urinal.
“You got to protect yourself,” Berger told him.
“I’m not convinced I need a lawyer yet.”
“That’s the problem, you need a dose of reality. Come on, I’ve got Tama in my office.” Berger waved at the door, and they headed down the hall. “Anyway, I shit thee not, buddy. A good divorce lawyer will help you work it out so you aren’t begging for change on your lunch break. You can be sure she’s got someone already and he’s telling her how to position herself for a fight. He has her writing down what your income has been, what the joint assets are. He’s going to come at you with all kinds of requests for paper. They want to know the number of hairs on your ass. These guys are merciless. Every tax return. Every check you’ve written for five years, and they’re going to get it, too. It doesn’t matter that no kids are involved, either. You two were married before you went to law school?”
“We married my last year.” During the ceremony, he had kept his eyes open a second longer than Janice before they kissed, and so he had seen the trust in her closed eyelids, the implicit hope in her pressed lips.
Berger’s office door was open and Peter shut it gently. Berger’s daughter was playing on the rug and had pulled out a couple of law books.
“Hi, Tama,” Peter said to the child.
“She supported you?” Berger went on, jabbing at him mechanically, thinking more like a lawyer than a friend.
“Some.”
“How much?”
“Don’t know.” He turned to the child. “Why’s she here?”
“My wife usually picks her up. We had a little—things are just a little hectic … Say hello to Mr. Scattergood,” Berger prompted his daughter.
“Hello,” she whispered, barely looking up from her toys. Peter w
ondered if the child’s hair had been brushed that morning.
“Well, I don’t think it looks very good,” Berger said.
“Past and future valuation of advanced professional degree as part of the settlement?” Peter responded absentmindedly. Tama was absolutely beautiful. How could such a beautiful child have been spawned by such a burn-out twitch like Berger? More to the point, how was it that beautiful children became wretched, burnt-out twitches? Peter was half in love with Tama. On the night she was born, Berger had called him from the hospital, saying words he’d never forgotten: “We’re in the thick of it now.”
“Of course that’s what I mean,” Berger went on, pursuing the divorce issue.
“She wouldn’t do that, she has too much pride.”
“Hey—I love Janice, too. Don’t look at me like that, Peter.” Berger pulled out a pen. “This guy’s good.” He scribbled a number. “Doesn’t shit around—tells you what you’re up against. He handled my brother’s divorce. Give him a call.”
“We’ll see.” About matters of love, he didn’t trust Berger, whose own marriage had long been in famous tatters. Berger carried specially prepared business cards to use when he picked up secretaries in the Center City bars. On the reverse of the cards Berger had printed, I FIND YOU VERY ATTRACTIVE. He took the secretaries to the Hershey Hotel, always using the same room, if it was available.
“I suggest—Tama, don’t!” he yelled, then softly, apologetically, “Those are Daddy’s books …”
Tama dropped her head and was quiet.
“Lot of good-looking women around, pal,” Berger went on. “You should see—”
“I’ve seen them, all of them,” Peter said. “Bergs, I want to find my wife.”
“Yeah, wives…” Berger looked at his fingers, comparing the left hand to the right. He turned his palms up, examined them. His forehead glistened. “Things are very bad, Peter. Very. I’m, ah, thinking of—we’re having some definite money problems. It’s not that we’re wiped out—”
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