Twisted Justice

by Patricia Gussin

  “I did, but I’m ready to get into my robe and plunk down in front of the TV.”

  “Sounds good. Listen, can I ask a favor? I have a little emergency in the ER that should just take a few minutes.” Another outright lie. “Would you watch out for Steve and the kids and tell them I’ll be right back?”

  After Marcy agreed, Laura hung up before the housekeeper could ask any questions. Hot angry tears spilled down her cheeks as she backed the Olds wagon out of the garage. She hadn’t bothered to touch up her hair or lipstick. Trance-like, she drove past Tampa City Hospital and across the bridge that connected Davis Island to Tampa’s mainland. An ache in her throat, she noted that Steve’s billboard had been replaced with a car dealer’s ad. The thermometer near the bridge registered eighty-one, and it had started to drizzle. Before reaching Steve’s downstairs apartment on Oregon, she pulled over to dab at her eyes, blow her nose, and wipe the sweat off her brow. If the kids were there, she didn’t want them to see her such a mess.

  It was eight ten, still plenty of light outside as Laura approached Steve’s place. Parking behind a late-model yellow Firebird she found vaguely familiar, she silently advised herself to remain calm. Once she got the kids home safely, she would figure out what to do about Steve.

  Despair and panic eclipsed anticipation as she walked to the front door and pushed the doorbell. Did it even work? This was not exactly the high-rent district. The house needed a lot of work. The roof was sagging on one side and the cement stairs had begun to crumble. The houses on the block were built close together and she noticed that they were in much better repair than the one Steve occupied, which needed a paint job badly. Two stories high, these were much older than the homes on Davis Island. As she glanced around, she saw a child in an upstairs window next door looking at her. A girl with pigtails and a cute, inquisitive face. About the age of the twins, Laura guessed. She did not want to embarrass the child by waving, so she proceeded to knock on Steve’s door. No response. She knocked again before trying the doorknob, which turned easily. Stepping inside, she walked across the empty living room. There was a sofa and two matching chairs in a faded plaid pattern. Newspapers, dirty dishes, and empty beer cans were scattered about.

  Disgusting, she thought. How could a person so meticulous about his personal appearance be such a slob? What a bad influence on the kids. The last month must have been much easier on Marcy without him around. One less person to pick up after.

  “Hello?” she called.

  She picked her way through the hallway and looked into the room on the right, a bedroom. Besides the unmade bed and clothes strewn about, only a bureau filled the room.

  Down the hall, she stepped into the kitchen. What a mess there too — it seemed that Steve had not washed a single dish since he’d moved in. Completely repulsed, Laura fumbled in her cluttered purse for her car keys, nearly tripping on the foot before she noticed it.

  A human foot. Only inches away.

  The body of a woman lay on the kitchen floor. Blank eyes stared at the ceiling and feet — nails painted a fiery red — protruded from spiked high heels. Laura gasped as she took in the black eyes frightfully wide open, the short, dark hair neatly combed behind her ears exposing diamond cluster earrings shaped like starfish. She wore a sleeveless cobalt blue dress above tanned bare legs and the sling-back heels precisely matched the dress’s color. But it was her chest that riveted Laura’s attention — the gaping wound in her chest, the blood that was everywhere.

  At a glance Laura knew the woman — and she knew the woman — soaked in a pool of blood on Steve’s tiled kitchen floor, was dead.

  Kim Connor was dead.

  Nevertheless, Laura knelt down beside the body, feeling for the carotid artery with her right hand, trying to find a pulse. She knew she wouldn’t find one even though the flesh was warm. Ripping open the top two buttons of the dress with both hands — the blue cloth was warm and sticky, drenched with blood — she reached in. The chest was immobile, no trace of respiration. Should she try manual open-chest cardiac massage? As she inched closer to make absolutely sure there was no pulse, her left hand, sticky with blood, landed on something cold and metallic nestled against Kim’s hip. She ignored it, never taking her eyes from the woman’s chest. Finally, she stood up.

  Kim was dead. Who had killed her? And here, on Steve’s kitchen floor? Steve? Could he have done this? And the kids? Had they been here?

  Help. She needed to call for help. That’s when Laura heard footsteps behind her.

  Two uniformed cops had let themselves in while Laura stood mute and unmoving. They’d been cruising the Hyde Park area when the request came through to respond to a call from a female who had reported hearing a gunshot from upstairs at this Oregon address. The front door had been open and unlocked, and at precisely 8:13 p.m., the officers let themselves in, planning a cautious walk through.

  “False alarm,” Belinsky, a big-bellied Tampa veteran, mumbled just before he heard the wheezy voice of Parker, his younger partner: “Freeze. Police.”

  Darting toward the kitchen, Belinsky entered a scene that looked like a staged tabloid. Hands bloody, a blonde female stood staring down at her apparent victim: a familiar looking, petite female with short dark hair lying in a pool of blood on the tile floor, a Colt thirty-eight beside her. Parker’s .45 was locked on the blonde’s back. Belinsky started blankly at his partner for only an instant before drawing his own gun. He felt cold sweat trickle down his neck and down his forehead into his eyes as the blonde started to turn.

  “Hands up,” Belinsky barked, his gun taking aim at the center of the blonde’s chest. She seemed dazed and disheveled. Maybe a crazy?

  “Lady, hands up,” Belinsky repeated more slowly as he inched closer. “Easy now.” Signaling his partner to stay still, he said evenly, “Let’s nobody get hurt.” His warning too late for the young woman bathed in blood on the floor.

  In slow motion, Laura lifted her hands up into the air.

  “I got her,” Parker said in a high-pitched wheeze.

  “Okay, man,” Belinsky said as he inched close enough to reach down and grab the piece that lay on the floor with his handkerchief. “I got the weapon.”

  Belinsky placed the thirty-eight on the Formica counter, moving quickly to slip the handcuffs off his belt. Clamping them shut over Laura’s bare wrists, he was careful not to smear her bloody palms as he pulled her arms behind her back. She had not moved.

  “Stay put, lady,” Belinsky grunted, “Parker, keep watching her.”

  Kneeling over the bloody body, he carefully checked for a pulse, respiration, any sign of life. “Dead as dead can be,” he announced. “Parker, ambulance first, then the station. There’s a phone in the living room.” Belinsky turned toward Laura as Parker walked out. “Name,” he demanded.

  “What,” Laura whispered.

  “Your name, lady,” Belinsky repeated.

  “Laura Nelson,” she whispered almost inaudibly.

  “Do you live here?”

  “No.” Again almost inaudible.

  “Speak up. Do you know who does live here?”

  “My husband,” Laura answered a little louder this time.

  “You don’t live with your husband?”

  “No — not anymore,” Laura managed. She was shaking now, all traces of color drained from her face.

  “Do you know this woman?” Belinsky demanded.

  The younger cop returned and started in with his own questions as he pointed to Kim’s body. “Do you know who she is?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, are you going to tell us or do we book you first?” Parker grabbed Laura’s arm.

  “Ms. Nelson,” Belinsky said in a conciliatory tone, “why don’t you just answer the questions. For starters, who is that woman?”

  “Kim Connor,” Laura answered simply.

  Belinsky whistled. “Connor? The Channel Eight News lady. Thought I recognized her.”

  “Doesn’t look so good blood soaked,
does she?” Parker commented. He let go of Laura’s arm with a little shove. “Wasn’t she on with some guy all the time? Both their mugs are plastered all over town.”

  “That’s my husband,” Laura said quietly.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Heading north on I-75 Sunday night, the kids finally fell asleep. Relieved, Steve drank the silence in. He had to clear his head, come to grips with what was happening. Back when he was a social worker, he would often counsel his clients to simplify their view of whatever situation was troubling them. That small act, he saw again and again, was the first step toward making any terrible reality more manageable. Well, maybe now he could do the same for himself. He had to. Had to think this through, but how? The problem was, he didn’t know where to start. With himself? With Kim? No, that was way too much at this moment. Easier to start with Laura.

  Both hands drumming the steering wheel, he imagined her reaction to the empty house. She’d be shaken up. One thing anyone would say about Laura was that she was devoted to those kids. He had woken them at dawn on Saturday and hastily packed their duffel bags with clothes and toys, before herding them into a rented station wagon as quietly as he could. Originally, he had only planned an overnight trip to Clearwater Beach while the brakes on his Ford were being replaced, wanting to show Laura not to mess with him, acting like she could just kick him out with no job, no house, no nothing.

  But that was before.

  And now, after she learned that he’d taken them far away, she’d follow, and then they’d all be back together. That was pretty simple, right? It was a plan, he needed a plan. He and the kids would head for his father’s house in Traverse City. Laura would follow, and they’d have time to work things out. She would have no choice. It was his plan: it could happen.

  It really could. It had to. What happened with him and Kim was just that, an unfortunate mistake.

  Still, when he and the kids were in the movie theatre, what had possessed him to check his answering machine? He inhaled sharply, sucking in the silence as if it were oxygen. Before the kids had finally fallen asleep in the car, they had peppered him with questions.

  “How long are we going to be gone?” Kevin asked.

  “We’ll see.”

  “When are we going to get there? Can we go fishing?”

  “Kevin, shut up with all the questions,” Mike demanded.

  Steve attempted a smile, though he could not keep his fingers from drumming even then. “Relax, Mike. It’ll be an adventure. There’s fishing, and hunting —”

  “But Mom doesn’t even know we’re gone,” Mike said. “We were supposed to go to the beach today for Grandpa’s birthday. Does she even know that your dad is sick?”

  “You let me worry about your mother. Like I said, Grandpa Nelson’s got the flu and he lives by himself so it’s good that we’re headed up there.”

  “But we don’t even know him,” Mike argued.

  “We’ll fix that,” Steve said.

  “Hey, Dad, Mom always packs our clothes for an overnight,” Kevin added. “She’ll be mad that you just threw stuff in a bag.”

  “I’m hungry,” Natalie complained.

  “We’ll eat later,” said Steve. “Can’t stop now. Besides, Patrick’s sleeping.”

  “But Dad —” Natalie tried again.

  “I said no, not now. Everybody be quiet — don’t wake up your brother.”

  “I‘m hungry too,” Nicole complained. “Do you want us to starve to death?”

  Steve turned to flash a stern look. “Stop being so sassy.”

  One by one, the rest of the kids eventually fell asleep. When Kevin stirred and asked what time it was, Steve told him midnight, though it was really two fifteen. After driving two more hours, Steve finally checked in at the Roadside Motel in Forsyth, Georgia, just north of Macon. There were two double beds in the drab room, which was warm and smelled like mildew, and although Steve adjusted the air-conditioning, it didn’t get much better. Steve, Mike, and Kevin crowded into one bed, and Patrick and the twins slept in the other.

  After setting the clock alarm for 6:45 a.m., Steve fell into a fitful sleep. He woke the kids at seven, and packed the car. By the time they ate breakfast at a Waffle House off the interstate, the kids were clamoring to call Laura. Climbing back into the car, Steve told them she was on call and promised he would call her later at the hospital.

  “Dad, can we call Mom at home right now?” asked Kevin. “Maybe she hasn’t left for the hospital yet.”

  “Bet she’s worried about us,” Mike added.

  Steve drummed the steering wheel. “How many times do I have to tell you to let me worry about your mother? I told you I will call her later. You know how she is at the hospital. Now, no more talking. I need quiet to think.”

  “I still don’t see why we have to go all the way to Michigan,” Nicole whined. “Why can’t we just go home?”

  “I just told you why,” Steve said sharply. “It’s time we spent time with my side of the family.”

  “But what about Mom?” Natalie went on.

  “Look, Mom’ll come up as soon as she can,” Steve shouted. “Now I want you to stop whining and shut up! Mike, get me the map out of the glove compartment.”

  They drove in silence toward Michigan. Just after ten, Steve stopped at a gas station in Dalton, just south of the Georgia-Tennessee border. While the kids used the bathrooms, he called his father from the phone booth. He wanted to let him know where they were now, and when they would get there tomorrow. It was over a twenty-hour trip and they would take it in pieces. Unlike last night, Steve told himself, tonight he’d get more than a few hours sleep.

  He went into the restroom and doused his face with cold water. Even with the air-conditioning on at full blast, he’d been sweating profusely.

  “My children are missing.” Laura sat slumped over the bare metal interrogation table. It was after ten, almost two hours since they’d found her with Kim Connor. Her head ached. Her eyes burned. “Don’t you understand? I was looking for my children.”

  Why wouldn’t they stop badgering her? First those policemen back at Steve’s house. Then these two detectives who showed up at Steve’s and led her off in handcuffs to police headquarters on Tampa Avenue. In a blur, she was fingerprinted, probed, and photographed. They took away her purse, inventoried the contents, made her sign something, and removed the shoelaces from her sneakers. She was still wearing a tee shirt and cutoffs, and the air-conditioning made her shiver as she tried to answer the onslaught of questions. It was all being tape recorded. They told her that. The room was a perfect square with enough room for only a small table and four ancient chairs. The walls were painted a darkish green, reminding her of bile, bare except for a smudged rectangular mirror. The lone light fixture in the center of the ceiling was yellowed and chipped, making the light dim and uneven.

  Detective Randy Goodnuf, the younger of the two detectives, was in his mid-thirties with thin sandy hair surrounding a patch of scalp that looked jaundiced in the bad light. Too skinny, he seemed extremely tense, tapping his feet, checking his watch, twisting his navy blue tie as he paced.

  Detective Ramiro Lopez, the senior of the partners by several years, was his opposite, sitting quietly across the table from Laura. Jet black hair feathered back from his tanned, smiling face, he exuded charm. Dressed in an expensively tailored suit, he looked more like a successful Hispanic businessman than an aggressive homicide detective. Tonight the detectives led with Lopez’s disarming charm, but as the night wore on, everyone’s tone changed.

  “With all due respect, Dr. Nelson, we do have a dead woman to deal with first,” Goodnuf snarled.

  So far all they’d gleaned from the interrogation was a fragmented story. Found the body. Knew the victim. Was looking for her husband and children. Separated from husband. Wasn’t her gun. Didn’t own a gun. Didn’t know who did own the thirty-eight that lay by the body. Blood on her hands from trying to assess the victim.

  Lopez held up t
wo fingers — the victory sign — to his partner. “Okay, Dr. Nelson,” he said, “we understand that you’re concerned. I have two boys of my own. Now, your husband picked up all five kids early yesterday morning, while you were still asleep. Is that right?”

  “Yes.” Laura nodded weakly.

  “Where do you think he took them?”

  “I don’t know. I thought they might be at his apartment. That’s why I went there. I left several messages on his answering machine.”

  “Answering machine?” Detective Lopez’s eyebrows shot up. “Uh-huh, we’ll follow that up.”

  “So where were you before you went to your husband’s apartment?” Goodnuf pressed.

  “Just a minute, Randy,” said Lopez. “Let’s try to help Dr. Nelson with her kids first.”

  Goodnuf stepped back. “I’ve had enough of this runaround.”

  “My partner’s getting restless,” Lopez said as he rose from his chair, rolling it back against the wall and stretching his legs. “Now where do you think Mr. Nelson might be?”

  “I told you —”

  “Name all the places he might take the kids,” Goodnuf snapped.

  “I’ve tried,” Laura said, pressing her hand to her temple. “The only place I can think is my parents’ in Sarasota, but they would have called me.”

  “We’ll call them,” Lopez said. “Has your husband ever done this before? Taken the kids away?”

  “No, never.”

  Goodnuf frowned. “Do you think he’d try to leave the area with them? He could be almost anywhere now. It’s been about forty hours — according to your story, that is.”

  “I … I don’t know. I guess so.” She paused. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Dr. Nelson, who was close to your husband?” Lopez sat down again. “Who would he go to?”

  “I just don’t know. He lost his job and the only —” She stopped herself from saying that his closest friend had been Kim Connor.

  “The only what?” Goodnuf demanded.

  “I … I don’t know.”