Masquerade

by Cauffiel, Lowell;

  Her testimony lasted less than two minutes. As Assistant County Prosecutor Robert Agacinski began the first of twenty terse questions, she heard the abrasive strokes of chalk from the TV artist in the jury box to her left.

  Then she forced herself. Look up, she thought. Jan Lucille Canty, look up at Fry and Spens.

  There.

  He is so big, she thought. His chest is so big. Fry was wearing a gray plaid Western shirt and gray corduroys. But he looks like Mr. Clean, she thought. But no, I could never be alone in a room with that man.

  “How long have you been married to Dr. Canty?” the prosecutor asked.

  “In September it would have been eleven years.”

  Then she saw Dawn. Her eyes were sleepy, her hair wildly unkempt. She had a ruffled blue blouse and blue jeans. But her clothes were worn and dirty. Jan saw her ankles. They were swollen above her cheap black high heels. She was almost yellow. God, Jan thought, she’s got liver disease.

  “And did you come down to the morgue?” the prosecutor asked.

  “Yes, I did.”

  As the attorney continued she wanted to ask the questions. She had a thousand of them for Dawn. What did you think of him? Did you know about me? Did he treat you kindly? How did you treat him? Did you love him? Did he love you? Why did you do this to him? Did he suffer? Do you know how I suffer now?

  “Did you give medical authorities or anybody permission to perform an autopsy or dismember the body in any way?” the prosecutor asked.

  “No.”

  Then she saw past the frizzy hair and careless posture at the defense table. Dawn Spens looked so young. My God, she thought. What has happened to you to end up here? Jan found the prostitute bewildering.

  “You may step down, Doctor,” said the court clerk.

  One after another, Robert Agacinski called his witnesses. A half-dozen southsiders were summoned to tell their stories about Lucky Fry, Dawn Spens, and the man they called The Doc. Cheryl Krizanovic. Frank McMasters. John Bumstead. Mike Oliver. Tammy Becker.

  Through many of their brief testimonies Dawn Spens looked bored and indifferent. She fiddled with a dead, half-burned cigarette next to a legal pad. Halfway through the three-hour exam the hooker looked as though she was going to nod out in open court. She laid her head on her arm, her upper body draped over the edge of the defense table.

  John Fry looked every witness in the eyes, sometimes slightly nodding his head.

  Then Gary Neil took the stand. He was wearing a new sweatshirt with a hood, its long sleeves pulled down past his wrists this hot summer day. Dawn Spens sat up. John Fry’s eyes followed him to his seat. Neil looked straight ahead, ignoring him. Then everyone discovered why Fry was charged with premeditated murder.

  “Did there come a time in July of ’85 when you had a conversation with John Fry about Al?” Agacinski asked after establishing Neil and Fry’s relationship.

  Neil said he did, on a Saturday afternoon in the basement of Fry’s house on Casper.

  “And who all was present, at the time?”

  “Just me and John.”

  “And the conversation was about Al?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did he say?”

  “Said he had a big score that was coming at him, between twenty and thirty thousand dollars, supposedly … Doc was supposed to bring the money over for him and Dawn … He was going to kill The Doc, chop him up, and wanted to know if I wanted—if I wanted to be in on it. I said no, and he said not to tell anybody else about it or else I’d be out, and that’s about it.”

  It was the information Sergeant Gerald Tibaldi and other interrogators had pumped from Neil after priming him with a three-day stay in the headquarters’ lockup.

  “Did he indicate why he was going to do that to Al?” Agacinski continued.

  “Yes, to get rid of the body.”

  “Did he indicate why he was going to kill Al to begin with?”

  “Yes, for the money.”

  “Did he indicate to you when he expected to do that, when he wanted you to help him?”

  “He said about a week.”

  On crossexamination, Jay Nolan, Fry’s court-appointed attorney, extracted Neil’s lengthy prison record. Then Nolan introduced John Fry’s worst enemy—his own bragging mouth. He asked Neil:

  “Out of the clear blue, did he initiate this conversation down in the basement? Had there been anything that led up to it?”

  “No. He was more or less bragging, ‘I’m going to have a lot of money. If you want to help me, I could use some help. I’ll let you in on the money. If not, don’t grab on my shirttail when I get this money.’ ”

  “Was he the kind of guy that did a lot of bragging?”

  “Yes.”

  Al Canty’s relationship with Dawn Spens also became public record that day. The prosecution introduced her eleven-page confession. Soon a copy was warm on a nearby copying machine.

  Now there was no doubt. The psychologist was the prostitute’s trick. But many who saw her during the exam were as perplexed as Jan Canty. She didn’t seem to fit anyone’s concept of a siren who could cost a prominent psychologist his fortune, his life, and, finally now, his reputation. And Dawn’s statement left more questions than answers.

  Judge Torres ordered John Fry and Dawn Spens to stand trial in early December as charged.

  91

  The missing sex life that had troubled Jan Canty through three years of marriage now seemed a godsend. The reports linking AIDS, intravenous drug use, and prostitution were just emerging. She went for a full workup from her physician anyway.

  She was relieved with the test results. She’d nurture any good news she could find.

  Several days later, she dropped by Gladys Canty’s house to pick up the registry from the memorial service. Gladys hinted that Al hadn’t been entirely honest with Jan about his finances, that he’d been borrowing large sums of money.

  “Jan, do you think he didn’t want us to be close?” she asked.

  For a brief moment they connected. They’d both been manipulated by Al.

  “Don’t worry,” Jan said. “You’ll always have a daughter in me.”

  But Jan made little time for visits to Al’s mother. Her parents planned to stay with her for two months, and the first order of business was a garage sale. Jan wanted to weed any hint of Al out of the big Tudor, out of her life. Celia Muir helped with the task. They began with the clothes—pulling them off the racks, out of the dressers, stuffing them into plastic garbage bags for charity. Jan slammed the drawers shut when they were empty.

  All day Celia had tried to mask her sadness. Then she picked up one of Al’s shirts and put it to her nostrils. It smelled like him.

  “Ces, what are you doing?” Jan demanded.

  “Well, it—it’s Al. It smells like Al. I’m going to miss him.”

  “Well, I’m not.”

  Jan continued stuffing the plastic bags. She found the Al Miller mechanic’s smock from the Halloween party. She wanted to burn it. Then Jan’s twin sister made a discovery in an obscure corner of one of the big closets.

  “Look at this,” the twin said. “Jan, I want it.”

  Jan was perplexed by the shiny blue jacket with the monogram “Cadieux Bar” across the back. She wondered where and why her husband bought such a thing.

  “This just isn’t his style,” she said.

  Soon they were packing the knickknacks, boxes of them. Jan found herself grabbing anything associated with Al. Then she came upon the white coffee cup—the one fired in a kiln with the rim depressed, as though someone had tried to smash it. Inside was the ceramic figure of a little man trying to push the cup back into shape. Al brought it home to her the day she almost quit college.

  “That’s a struggle cup,” he said.

  When Al was hospitalized she took it to him to cheer him up. She asked herself, do I really want to get rid of this?

  Yes, she did.

  Old books, paintings, records, tools from th
e garage, Al’s home office furniture. Later the antique cars and parts would be sold. The antique-brick driveway was covered with odds and ends by the time they were done.

  Later, Jan was thankful Celia and her parents were around. Without them she would have made some bad decisions. She tried to haul a $1,000 Oriental rug to the driveway just because Al had picked it out. Her mother put on the brakes.

  “Jan, you’re going to be angry with me and I’m not getting into your business, but you are not going to sell that.”

  “Don’t tell me what I can sell and not sell,” she barked. “I’ll sell what I want.”

  Anything she couldn’t sell she dragged into a big pile below the tall elms, where it waited for the Grosse Pointe Park garbage trucks. Next to the heap she put Al’s Jeep Junior, the little car he’d held on to for years.

  Al’s office was another two weeks’ work. Two discoveries in particular disturbed her. She was bewildered by copies of two money orders for $250 she found in his desk. Al had forged her signature at the bottom. Later, she realized the negatives of her photos that had documented their home and its belongings were missing. Al must have taken them to make copies. But why? she thought.

  What a sloppy record keeper Al was, she thought, as she worked her way through piles of paperwork. She found grocery lists mixed in with health records. She found car magazines piled with psychology journals.

  As she rummaged, she found a file labeled “Project Indianwood.” There were only a few sheets of paper. Where, she wondered, are the records of the ten hospitals that have his videotapes?

  When she was finished, she closed the door to his office in the Fisher Building suite. She wouldn’t open it again.

  Al followed her everywhere nonetheless. One day she bagged a half-dozen telephones Al had lying around and took them back to the telephone company for credit. She handed the clerk their phone bill with the bag. The clerk looked at the phone bill, looked at the phones, looked at the bill, and then looked back at her.

  “Oh,” she said, turning to a coworker. “It’s him. It’s her. That’s the guy … You’re his wife.”

  “It’s wonderful being a celebrity,” she snapped. “Now, just take the phones.”

  Jan felt people staring at her in the Ram’s Horn, a Grosse Pointe restaurant where she often grabbed a quick meal.

  A month after his death, she returned to the University Health Center to supervise other psychologists. A nurse greeted her with “Good morning, Dr. Canty.” A half-dozen people stopped in their tracks and looked.

  Everybody already knew her professionally at the center, but everybody now was so quiet. They looked at her as though they wanted to ask questions but couldn’t get up the nerve. Jan felt like a walking item of curiosity.

  When the questions did start, they didn’t stop.

  “Tell me, Jan, did you know?”

  What a dilemma, she thought. How do I explain it? Do I want to explain it? It just would put me more center stage. She wanted to find the shadows.

  After a while she stopped answering questions. She suspected nobody believed her anyway. She formulated a standard response.

  “Lookit, you’re going to believe what you want anyway, so I’d just rather not talk about it.”

  And Al, always Al, she thought.

  “What’s going to happen to his patients?”

  She hated that question the most. She thought, what about me? Am I invisible?

  Al’s patients were brutally frank. They seemed to perceive her as just another therapist who could handle anything they said.

  “How is this going to affect your patients?”

  “Are you going to have a nervous breakdown?”

  Al’s patients haunted her. She called many of them, offering referrals.

  “No thanks,” many said. “I was near termination anyway.”

  One kept calling nearly every day for weeks. She wanted her records; Jan couldn’t find them. She called repeatedly at home.

  “Look,” Jan finally said. “He kept sloppy records. All he probably kept was insurance forms, anyway. I just don’t have time to deal with it right now.”

  She contacted the Michigan Psychological Association for advice. Yes, a staffer said, his records could be destroyed. After she secured permission from probate court, she burned them.

  Jan wished she could have torched all the bills as well. They never stopped coming. Al had let the Fisher Building rent slide for nearly a year. He was nearly fourteen thousand dollars behind. He owed more than seven thousand dollars in back income taxes. She feared the IRS would be at her door any day. Hospital bills, the answering service, accountants—he’d left her with a tab exceeding twenty-five thousand dollars.

  And Al’s mother, Jan thought. She seemed oblivious to Jan’s pain. How could this have happened to poor Bus? Bus. Buster. Al Jr. Alan Canty. W. Alan Canty.

  Damn it, she thought, doesn’t she realize the destruction he’s left in his wake? Me. His patients. Jan wanted to shout at her: “Wake up, damn it!”

  By late August, she’d lost twenty-five pounds. She still couldn’t get a good night’s sleep. She had nightmares. She woke up mornings wondering how she’d gotten the bruises on her arms and legs.

  “Jan, you’ve been bumping into doorjambs and things,” her mother told her.

  One of many trips to the doctor revealed she’d developed an irregular heartbeat and gone into early menopause.

  There was comfort, of course: Letters from people she hadn’t heard from in years. People who knew Al, offering to help. A neighbor who put out a standing invitation for a guest room if she got lonely or frightened. Author and psychologist Albert Ellis sent her two letters. He wrote:

  “He has been one of the pioneer rational-emotive therapists in the country … And I have always heard excellent things about him from several of his clients. His loss to these clients and of course to RET will be a severe one. I hope you are bearing up well under this enormous strain and if there is anything I can do to help, please let me know.”

  Rational thinking, she thought. Where was Al’s rationality?

  Jan’s feelings took on the nature of Al’s life and death. He’d left her heart mutilated like his body. When she was out among people she found herself angry.

  “Did you know about this, Jan?” a neighbor asked in her backyard.

  “If I did I would have killed him myself.” She couldn’t believe she’d said it.

  Alone, she looked at old photos and found herself missing the man she married. She felt sorry for him. He seemed so pathetic. She wanted to talk to him.

  Then, she thought, how dare he leave me with these questions? But I can’t punish him. He’s already paid the ultimate price. What would I have done if he had lived and I had found out?

  “Ces, do you think he loved me?” she found herself asking her friend many times.

  Just before Labor Day, her parents returned to Arizona. Alone her first day in the big Tudor, she couldn’t connect with herself. When she sat down, she decided she had to stand. When she decided to do paperwork, she wanted to go outside.

  It was a gorgeous Saturday. She mounted her bike and rode down to Windmill Pointe Drive, stopping by the city park. As she looked at Lake St. Clair she noticed the couples. How dare you be together? she thought. Don’t you know what a miserable day this is? Everybody in the world seemed to have a partner.

  She pedaled home and called Celia Muir, who urged her to visit.

  “I’m on my way right now,” she told her.

  Three hours later she found herself sitting alone in the Ram’s Horn restaurant, thinking she ought to be heading to the Muirs’ house. When she arrived there, Ces was worried sick.

  Jan spent the night. The next morning she rose just before dawn and tiptoed out of the Muirs’ house. She saw one of the most pictorial sunrises of her life over a set of railroad tracks aimed toward the horizon.

  She found herself again with two questions that had been unrelenting: How could you do
this to me, Al? Why didn’t you come to me for help? Forget the fact I was your wife. Damn you, I was your friend.

  Jan didn’t reach for her camera. She just wanted it to rain.

  92

  Gladys Canty had hoped it wouldn’t get worse, but it had. She couldn’t understand why her daughter-in-law was being so cold.

  Her first hint was the way Jan had dropped off Buster’s high chair that day before the garage sale. Mrs. Canty already was hurt she hadn’t been asked to help out. Jan drove up in her red Thunderbird and wrestled it out of the trunk.

  “How come you’ve brought this back?” Mrs. Canty asked.

  “My mother told me you particularly wanted this back,” Jan snapped. Then she sped off, leaving the chair on the porch.

  Mrs. Canty probed her own memory. She couldn’t remember ever saying that to Jan’s mother. She even checked with her friend Edna, who was there that day Jan’s mother visited. No, Edna didn’t remember her saying anything about the chair either.

  Some weeks later there had been another problem.

  “Jannie, I just can’t shake the feeling that we’ve let Alan down,” she told her one night on the phone.

  Several nights later they talked again.

  “You hurt me a great deal with that comment,” Jan told her. “I’ve been a good wife.”

  “I didn’t mean to hurt you. I meant ‘we’ in general. Society and such.”

  Now, Mrs. Canty thought, I’ve done this foolish thing. Why didn’t I realize? In September, she sent Jan a card and a check for twenty-five dollars, marking what would have been their eleventh anniversary. The letter that came back was blistering. The word “whoremonger” stood out.

  “Why would you want to celebrate a mockery of a marriage?” Jan wrote, adding she didn’t want to see her again. On matters of the estate, they would deal through attorneys from now on.

  In the weeks ahead, Gladys was thankful she had her friends. They took her on outings to historic sites and club functions around the city. Sometimes they gathered for an afternoon of tea. But the company couldn’t ease her wonderment whether he had suffered during his death.

  One night she had a dream. At least it seemed a dream as she was falling asleep. It couldn’t have been Buster, she thought, sitting there at the typewriter he’d bought her one year for Christmas.