HCC 006 - The Confession

by Domenic Stansberry

  “Leaving so soon?” she asked

  “Work in the morning.”

  “On Sunday?”

  “The Lord’s work,” I said.

  This got laughs all around. Then the attendant appeared with my car and Lady Wilder indulged the prerogative of every drunken hostess, saying good-bye forever, touching me more than might otherwise be allowable, running her fingers down the front of my shirt. (For a second, maybe, I closed my eyes, feeling her fingers touch my chest, and in that instant I imagined myself driving down the streets, “Where’s your tie?” she asked, and I heard myself mutter something back, I don’t know what, and she laughed, but I was not there, I was driving down the illuminated streets, and everything—the houses, the cars, the trees—they were all etched in a glowing, ethereal light, an aura—and I was headed deeper down those streets, deeper into myself.) Lady Wilder gave me a proper kiss then, sexless and gray, and I drove off. I headed for Sausalito, gliding over the same dark avenues I’d imagined just the moment before, illuminated now by the haze of the arc lamps overhead, by passing cars and the moon up there somewhere, glowing behind a cloud. I parked on a side street and walked up the back alley to Saras kitchen. I knocked.

  Sara opened the door, just a crack. The apartment was dark behind her.

  “No, Jake.”

  “Would you like a drink?”

  She hesitated. I could see the sadness in her eyes, the desire, and beneath them both a shadow, something she herself could not quite put a name to.

  “Just one more time?” I asked.

  Sara let me in, and I embraced her, and her body opened around me like a flower, there in the kitchen, and for a little while nothing else mattered anymore. I lost myself, there in the dark, and those moments, our last together, were as fierce and beautiful and pleasurable as any I have ever known.

  Then the next day, in the early afternoon, the police came to me with the news that Sara was dead.

  PART FOUR

  The Accused

  17.

  What is the nature of memory? Chemical impulses, stored in the brain, like images on tape. Or something else, the soul maybe, examining the essence of existence. In many ways, I suppose, this is the riddle of life. Who am I? Why are some events replayed so vividly in our imagination, while others disappear as if they never occurred? Psychologists used to believe every instant of our lives was stored in our consciousness, waiting to be recalled. Nowadays there are different theories. We remember only in fragments, and fill in the gaps. So the self-fashions its memories according to its current needs, and this process is ongoing.

  Myself, I remember most vividly how I climbed over Sara in the dark, in her bedroom, and left her apartment as quietly as I was able. I had fallen asleep next to her on the bed, and I could still smell her on my body as I stepped outside. A car rolled by on a nearby street—I saw its headlights at the intersection, a sedan, there a minute, then gone—and I smoked a cigarette. I didn’t smoke them often, but her boyfriend had left a pack behind. So I sat on the stoop, smoking, listening to the early morning sounds. I felt reconstituted, all the anger and confusion gone, everything back in place the way it should be, as if something had been set right inside me—all the parts aligned.

  I got up to leave. I walked down the alley.

  Did I hear footsteps then, an echo on the concrete, going up the way I’d just departed? Or was this something my imagination came up with later, a new detail, a brush stroke, an embellishment?

  I awoke mid-morning, coming up out of the black heart of sleep with the same feeling of refreshment.

  Things were going to be all right.

  I went about my trailer and put things in order. I hung up my jacket, patting the pockets, and there I found Sara’s earring, the one that had come loose in my hands the night before, out under the arbor. I placed it on the counter, then changed into my clothes for the new day.

  I started to think about what I might do with my life.

  I went to the gym. I did some chest presses, some leg pulls. Sit-ups and squats. I stared lazily around the room. A woman in gray spandex, dyed blonde, gazing ceilingward as she worked the treadmill. A brunette in blue, breasts taut beneath her polo shirt. A redhead on her way to the parking lot, to her Jag with the personalized plates.

  For me, it would be time to hit the tennis courts soon. Maybe not here. Maui, I thought. Or the Virgin Islands. Or maybe I would go the other direction, deep into the heartland.

  Studious shrink. Playboy. Man of contradictions—even I sometimes could not bridge the gap.

  Back in my trailer I went through my box of keepsakes. Little things. Jewelry, photos. Remembrances of my first wife. Other women. Sara’s earring lay still on the counter. It was over between us. The way we had made love last night, we were like people in the throes of a fever, but that fever had broken. She would not betray her fiance again.

  I dropped her earring into the box, fastened the lock, put it under my arm. I grabbed a clam shovel and headed out towards the bay.

  As a psychologist, I know the importance of ritual. When we move from one season to the next, it is necessary to mark the changes. That’s what I was doing then, walking through the high reeds along the Corte Madera marsh. I followed the path along an abandoned quay, where I could see San Quentin—with its grim, carnival towers, its stone walls and concertina wire.

  I followed the spit out a little further, then went down the marsh bank to a high-water post. The water didn’t come in this far anymore, not since they’d built the levee, and the ground here was dry. I dug a hole. My ritual. The box. Covered with dirt.

  I was done with the past.

  Elizabeth . . .

  I was not ready to let her go. I had put nothing of hers in the box. Even so, the box was under. I patted the dirt. There are some things we never let loose. The seagulls squawked. The pigeons squalled and scattered as I turned down the path.

  As I approached the trailer, I saw a black Caprice parked in front. Minor Robinson leaned against the grill, arms akimbo, watching me approach, his jacket open to the wind. (I thought again of the night before, the car at the head of the alley, the footsteps.) He had come to talk to me about Elizabeth, I guessed, to duke it out, cowboy style, because he wanted her for his own. Then Milofski appeared in the doorway of my trailer, stepping out from within.

  “What’s up?”

  Minor pointed at the shovel in my hand. “Where you been?”

  “Clam digging.”

  “There aren’t any clams out there.”

  “You’re right about that. I couldn’t find a single one.”

  “You’re a funny guy,” said Milofski.

  “What’s this about? What have you been doing in my trailer?”

  Neither man answered. I heard something in the reeds, and a man emerged from the other side of the berm, a uniform cop, circling behind me now. His job was to chase me down if I ran into the tidal lands—but there was nowhere to go. Mt. Tamalpais loomed, the legendary maiden, half asleep, drowsing over the marsh. I saw the maiden’s face then. The prominent cleft, up there in the ridge, her horse-teeth, her head tilted back, snoozing in the rock.

  “Where did you go you last night?” Minor asked. “After you left the party.”

  “Elizabeth,” I stammered, “did something happen to her?”

  “This isn’t about Elizabeth.”

  “Sara Johnson,” said Milofski. “Your girlfriend. The one you chased across the lawn.”

  “What about her?”

  “She’s dead.”

  I glanced down. I felt the past and present coming together—and all the jagged aspects of my personality. I imagined myself underneath the ground, beneath that damp sand.

  “That’s illegal entry,” I said to Milofski. “Unless you have a warrant.”

  “We just want to talk to you.”

  “I saw you in my trailer.”

  “No. I was only knocking. The door was open when we came up.”

  He was lyin
g. The uniform cop was just a few yards behind me now, tightening the circle.

  “What are you doing out of the office, Minor? You’re a prosecutor, not a field cop.”

  “Lieutenant Milofski would like to get in pursuit while the scent’s hot. You were one of the last people to see her alive. We thought maybe you could help.”

  I could imagine how I looked to them then: in my white shirt and my khakis, rocking back on my heels, eyes glistening with something like tears, maybe, and a small halfsmile on my face. Milofski and Minor regarded me suspiciously, as if my posture proved my guilt.

  “Do I have a choice?”

  “You were with Sara, we know that. We saw you pursuing her across the lawn.”

  “I wasn’t pursuing her.”

  “Be that as it may. Would you help us out with a statement?”

  The three of us rode in Minor’s Caprice, with the uniform following in a squad car behind. Minor told dispatch we were on the way. He was taking me to the tombs, to the jail beneath the Civic Center. When we got there, a television crew stood waiting on the sidewalk.

  “What’s this?”

  “They must have got it off the scanner.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “The murder—the press picked the news up, and they’ve been around all day. They’re listening to the public frequency for every tidbit they can get. They must have heard you were coming.”

  “Christ.”

  “Sorry, I don’t like this either. Except you know how it is once they get a bug up their ass.”

  I didn’t believe a word. He could have picked me up without all the fuss, but he wanted to make sure he was in the footage.

  The reporters came at us, and Minor went to speak to them. I turned my head and Milofski hustled me inside, down a long hall into the catacombs, to a dismal room not unlike that in which I had interviewed Matthew Dillard.

  18.

  They left me sitting in that room for quite a while, all alone. It was standard stuff no matter who you were. The cops wanted you to wait, helpless and bored. When they finally came, they came together. Minor still wore his suit coat. Milofski had taken off his jacket and stood brute-like in his wrinkled shirt sleeves. Minor sat across from me, but Milofski stayed on his feet, shambling around the table, a barrel-chested man, bearish and hungry.

  Minor did the talking, at least at first.

  “What we are trying to do here is get your statement,” said Minor. “If you feel like you need a lawyer, you can get yourself one. I have no problem with that.” His voice was flat and reasonable and in other circumstances I might have admired his professionalism, maybe, despite the enmity between us. “But I want to make it clear, you haven’t been charged with anything.”

  Meanwhile Milofski paced behind me. The way he fluttered, just beyond my vision, got on my nerves.

  “What went on between you two out at the arbor?” Minor asked.

  Prosecutors don’t often participate in the interrogation of a suspect, especially in the initial stages. Minor couldn’t resist, and I knew why. He had always disliked me, and it gave him a special pleasure: the possibility he could prosecute me for murder and bang my wife at the same time.

  “Sara and I had a relationship,” I said.

  He squared his shoulders and regarded me. He had an open face, and clear set eyes, and part of me could see why Elizabeth might be drawn to him. How she might turn away from me and all my ambiguities to someone who, on the surface of it anyway, played it all by the book. He was too calm, though, too self-assured—and I knew I should not trust him. Even so, I also knew there were certain facts that would cause me less trouble now, out in the open, then they would later on.

  “The reason I’m hesitant to talk to you, I don’t want that relationship dragged around in the paper,” I said. “Things have been rough between Elizabeth and I. It’s not going to make things any easier if my relationship with Sara gets dragged into the papers, alongside a murder investigation.”

  “I understand,” said Minor.

  “We both understand,” said Milofski. “You don’t want everyone to know you been messing around on your wife. But there’s a dead woman here—and there’s some questions we’d like you to answer.”

  Minor held up his hand, conciliatory. Playing the good cop now, keeping Milofski off my neck. Milofski would have none of it; he grunted in disgust.

  “Sara came up to me at the party,” I said. “She wanted to talk, so we went out under the arbor. Then we went our separate ways.”

  “What happened out there?”

  I should cut this conversation short, I thought. I should get a lawyer. It’s the thing you’re supposed to do, everybody knows, but the truth is hardly anyone pays attention to that advice. The impulse to talk is strong. I wasn’t any different from anyone else, but in my case there were other considerations. Sooner or later the cops would run a DNA test on the sperm, and they would figure out I’d been with her. Eventually I would need an explanation for what had happened between us, one that didn’t put me out at her apartment. I decided to give it to them now.

  “We were intimate.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “For a little while, out at the arbor, we were intimate.”

  “You had sex out there at the arbor? Is that what you’re saying?”

  “Yes,” I lied.

  Milofsky burst in. “You are a quick operator, aren’t you. You two, you couldn’t have been out there ten minutes.”

  “I was trying to end the affair. It was all but over anyway, that’s the truth of it. But she was an attractive woman, and we got carried away. We cared for each other, but Sara had a fiancé—and I told her she should get back together with him. That maybe it was over between my wife and I, but maybe it wasn’t. I just couldn’t give her a commitment. The situation was upsetting to us both.”

  “All this in ten minutes?”

  “She ran away. Across the lawn. I followed her out there—but by the time I caught up, she had driven off.”

  “What did you do next?”

  There were no witnesses to prove I’d been out to her apartment. No one had seen me.

  “What did you do next?” Minor asked again. “After Sara left the party?”

  “I had the valet bring me my car.”

  “Where did you go?”

  “Home.”

  “To Golden Hinde. To your wife’s house?”

  “No. My wife and I are separated. But you know that, don’t you? You’ve been out to Golden Hinde.”

  Minor didn’t blink, I’ll give him that. He wasn’t about to admit what was going on between him and Elizabeth (or what I thought was going on, anyway), but people had seen them at the party. People would talk and the gossip would spread.

  “I went to Lucky Drive,” I said. “To my trailer.”

  “You know how Ms. Johnson died?” asked Minor.

  “I only know what you told me.”

  “She was strangled. With a blue tie.” Minor gestured at Milofsky. “Show him the picture. The one from the party.” Milofsky slid it across the table: a Polaroid taken the night before by Barbara Wilder in the meditation room. Madison Paulie stood on one side of me, Milofski on the other. I was smiling, standing there in my white coat—and my blue silk tie.

  Minor took the Polaroid away and slid another photo across the table. A color glossy taken by the homicide photographer. Sara, prone on her bed. Legs spread. Milofski placed his index finger on her neck.

  “Same tie.”

  “No.”

  “It’s an expensive fabric. Not your usual.”

  “You’re not listening.” My voice trembled. The situation was coming home to me, I guess. “When I left the party I didn’t have it on. I took it off up at the arbor. I must have left it there, draped over the car. The convertible. I remember quite distinctly.”

  “No,” said Minor. “You didn’t leave the tie behind. You had it with you. You had it in your pocket.”

  �
�How would you know?”

  He didn’t know, of course; he was just playing games, guessing. I glanced down at the table, at the picture of Sara. She was naked and her eyes had a milky look and her tongue was distended.

  I sobbed.

  “Why did you do it?” Milofski asked.

  I put my head in my hands. I let it rest there for a long moment. I could feel the pair of them watching me, waiting for my answer, but I could say nothing. I was thinking of Elizabeth and Sara and all the women I had known over the years, and I was overcome.

  I sobbed again.

  Milofski repeated the question. His voice was gentler this time, a voice more gentle than I thought a man like him could have.

  “Did she reject you?”

  I knew what they were doing, how they were playing me. I glanced from one of them to the other.

  “You offend me,” I said.

  “You killed her, we know that. “

  “No”

  “It’s your tie.”

  “Why would I strangle her with my own tie?” I asked—and remembered Dillard saying the same thing. I was getting angry now. “Why would I do something like that?”

  “I don’t know. Why don’t you tell us?”

  “You can’t keep me here.”

  Neither of them responded. Their eyes were cold as moonlight falling on a concrete stair.

  “Did it ever occur to you, while you’re here—playing this game, for personal reasons, trying to rattle me down—that the real killer is still out there? People are at risk.”

  They held that same composure, both of them, and I could see it didn’t matter what I said, things were going to go a certain way. And it occurred to me that the DA’s office would downplay the obvious similarities between Sara’s murder and the Dillard case. At least for now. Because they didn’t have the evidence tying them together. And Minor wouldn’t want to risk the conviction he already had.