Motion to Suppress

by Perri O'shaughnessy

  23

  IF CARL TENGSTEDT was not Michelle’s father, then who was? Should she tell Michelle? What would be the psychological consequences?

  Michelle would want to know. Maybe she would remember her past, and in so doing, recollect that Thursday night as well.

  On Sunday Nina called the Tengstedts, finding no one home. On Monday morning, first thing, she called Bruno’s office. She needed his advice on how to break this to Michelle, but she called too late; he was on another line and just about to leave. After setting up a telephone conference for three that afternoon, she called the Tengstedts again.

  Barbara Tengstedt answered. She had that gravelly just-woke-up voice. Nina apologized for calling so early and said, "I’d like to talk to Michelle, but first, I’d like to talk to you, Mrs. Tengstedt."

  "Michelle’s still in bed."

  "Could you give her a message, then? I’d like her to drive up here on Thursday to prepare her for the trial. We’ll need most of the day, so can you ask her to be here by ten in the morning?"

  "I’ll tell her. I guess that means Mr. Hallowell isn’t going to change his position."

  "No. I’m sorry."

  "Have you heard from the Court of Appeals? Carl was talking about that last night at dinner, about how important it is."

  "No, but I expect to hear by the end of today or tomorrow. I’ll call you then."

  There was a pause. "What did you want to talk to me about?" Barbara Tengstedt said.

  "About Michelle’s father," Nina said. She couldn’t think of a graceful way to lead into it, so she just said it.

  "Carl? What about him?"

  "No, not Carl. Her natural father. I’ve learned that you and Mr. Tengstedt married when Michelle was ten years old. I haven’t said anything to Michelle yet."

  Barbara Tengstedt hung up on her, the grating finality of her response lodging like shrapnel in Nina’s ear. Nina called back.

  No answer.

  "A fine way to start the day," she muttered. She began working on jury instructions, but one part of her mind concentrated on Barbara Tengstedt.

  Why couldn’t Michelle’s parents cooperate? Nina could tell how much they loved Michelle and wanted to help her. Now, with a trial in one week, she needed to have everything in command, anything significant to the case, anything, however irrelevantly deemed, that might cast some light on Michelle’s actions that night.

  Sandy typed subpoenas and answered the phone. In the juggling act of trial preparation, many balls flew through the air that had to be caught and tossed back up at precise intervals.

  Sandy buzzed. "Cytograph."

  "Dr. Carlos, here," the woman on the phone began, without preamble. "We have the results on those DNA tests you sent to us. None of the samples you sent us match for the fetal DNA. Guess you didn’t have enough of a pool," she said with a muffled sound that could be a laugh.

  "There must be some mistake. Anthony Patterson’s tissue... it’s almost six months old ..."

  "It was admirably preserved," Dr. Carlos said. "Though I have to admit I have never looked for paternity using that type of tissue before. In death there is life, as they say. All we can do is test what you sent us. We tested the tissue sample from the decedent, Mr. Patterson, and the blood samples from the labs of, uh, Thomas Clarke and Stephen Rossmoor against the mom and fetus. No match, sorry."

  Nina hung up. Tengstedt wasn’t Michelle’s father. And nobody was Michelle’s baby’s father. She fielded an ache in her chest. Michelle had to be lying.

  Paul took out the stack of subpoenas and directions Sandy had given him in his van. He disliked process serving for the low-class, unpleasant work it often was. No one welcomed a subpoena. The best you could hope for was a reaction of polite distaste, so you could crawl away like some banana slug partially squashed under a shoe, still alive, if not respectable.

  That was what he missed about police work—respect. He sure didn’t miss the pay scale. He looked at the first subpoena. Dr. Frederick Greenspan. Nina still hadn’t made up her mind whether he should testify or not, but she had to go ahead with the subpoena.

  She had described the bungalow and its location, so he had no trouble finding it.

  Inside, the air-conditioning was on the blink. Elderly parties perspired into magazines. From behind a frosty window a frostier receptionist slammed the window shut between them when he explained he needed to see the doctor personally. ’’Just a moment," she said, muffled by the glass.

  Watching her for several minutes while she shuffled papers, he knocked again, and she opened two inches of access. While she glared, he rolled up the subpoena and pushed it through the crack. "Substitute service," he said. "Just in case Doctor isn’t in. But I think he’ll want to see me." Once again he was shut out. Deciding somebody would have to march out sooner or later to get rid of him, he picked a comfortable chair and immersed himself in a Reader’s Digest.

  He read one joke before a woman opened the inner door and motioned to him. Following her into a cramped office with a computer and files, he sat down when she indicated a chair with a "Please." She studied him, and he studied her. What he saw was a handsome middle-aged woman, slim, with an austere expression. She looked smart and capable. She had to be Mrs. Greenspan. He said as much, and she nodded her head. The subpoena lay on her desk.

  "I take it the doctor won’t see me?" Paul said.

  "He has far too many patients this morning," Ericka Greenspan said. "I can handle this business."

  "I’ve just subpoenaed your husband to testify as a witness in the Patterson trial. Normally, when a physician is going to testify, we try to make whatever special accommodations that might be needed. For instance, if he can only come one morning that week, we can ask the judge to put him on the stand out of the usual witness order."

  "How nice," Mrs. Greenspan said. "But Mr. Riesner told us my husband would not be testifying. I believe he talked to Mrs. Reilly."

  "Yes. Your husband seems to think Mrs. Reilly intends to attack his professionalism at this trial. That’s one reason I’m here, to assure him again, that is not her intention. His testimony, as I’m sure you’ll understand, is necessary to show Michelle Patterson’s emotional problems and state of mind just before the incident."

  "So you say," Mrs. Greenspan said.

  "He has to come to court. He would find it much more tolerable if he talked to Mrs. Reilly about the areas she will ask him to testify about."

  "He doesn’t intend to talk to her. Why does Mrs. Reilly think he will say anything that will help her case?"

  "Why would he want to harm his patient?" Paul said, and caught a flicker of uneasiness in her eyes as her self-possession abandoned her momentarily.

  "He doesn’t want to harm her," she said finally. "But he can’t help her. He might be compelled to allude to certain violent fantasies Mrs. Patterson had about her husband."

  "Fantasies he neglected to mention in his notes, or in his conversation with Ms. Reilly? Not very wise, Mrs. Greenspan. Even people who testify frequently have trouble lying in court. It usually rebounds in an unanticipated way."

  "I never said he would lie," Mrs. Greenspan said, satisfied with the veiled threat. "You can go now," she went on, the queen dismissing her courtier.

  "Did you ever meet Anthony Patterson, Mrs. Greenspan?" Paul said.

  Again she wavered. "We are finished," she said.

  "Dr. Greenspan does a good business. Mostly elderly people, it looks like. Probably doesn’t get too many as knockdown pretty as Michelle Patterson, does he, Mrs. Greenspan? Young too."

  "What’s your point?"

  "I have to wonder what your role is in protecting your husband. It all comes down to what you find to hate about Michelle Patterson."

  She rose to evict him, but she couldn’t let that one go by. He had fired the starting shot and she was out the gate and running.

  "You’re full of slimy insinuations, aren’t you? Just like the bitch you work for ..."

  She h
ad leaned forward and was now in his face. He put his big hand up, the heel of his hand under her chin, and pushed her hard back into her chair, knocking the breath out of her.

  As he got up, Paul said easily, "You open that mouth before I leave, I’ll have to wash it out with Lysol." He picked up the subpoena, placed it between her nerveless hands, and said, "Tell the doctor—he’s been served."

  After lunch, Nina received more bad news to cap a black day. The Wall Street brokers must have felt like this, hunching over their ticker tapes as the stock market toppled in 1929.

  The latest came in the form of a too-light letter from the Court of Appeals. Nina didn’t have to open it to know she had lost on the writ. If she had won, the letter would have been thick, weighty with an opinion and instructions for the next step. She had the urge to ask Sandy to read it to her. No. She opened it quickly. Writ denied as to all arguments. Copies sent to opposing counsel and Superior Court. Proceed to trial.

  Go directly to jail. She looked out her window, at the clarity and simplicity of Mt. Tallac, as distant from her now as Pluto.

  Her San Francisco call came in at three-thirty. "Sorry, my dear, I was talking to the president when you called."

  "You mean..."

  Dr. Cervenka laughed, a deep ho-ho-ho. "My superior, the president. He’s offering me the gold watch, the golden handshake, an appreciation dinner, and a swift kick out the door again. He does this every year."

  "Bruno, how old are you?" Nina said.

  "Methuselah was my younger brother, that’s all I’m going to tell you," he said. "I’ll think about it, as I do every year. I do not wish to retire and have him bring in some snot-nosed behaviorist who delights in torturing rodents. If the school becomes too vigorous in its efforts, it will be your turn to give advice."

  "How’s your hip?"

  "I’m still in this damn wheelchair," Bruno said. "But let’s not talk about me. Let’s talk about your case. Have you had an epiphany?"

  "It sounds exciting, Bruno, but I don’t know what that is."

  "I am surprised. I mean, have you reached an understanding in this case? Have the facts unfolded into a complete and compelling truth?"

  "Not exactly. I’d say the facts have unfolded into complete and total chaos, Professor," Nina said. "Listen to this. Michelle told me there were only three men who could possibly have fathered her baby. She claims the only men she had intercourse with are Tom Clarke, Stephen Rossmoor, and her husband. We tested tissue from all three, including Anthony Patterson. The lab called this morning and told me none of the samples match. So who got her pregnant, huh? She’s lying."

  "Lying? Perhaps."

  "Come on, Bruno, this all happened only seven months ago. She can’t have forgotten. She’s keeping the information from us that she had another lover. She’s lying to her own lawyer. I should drop the case."

  "You’re distressed," Bruno said. "You like your client very much."

  "I believed her, Bruno. I trusted her. I’m sick about it, and angry."

  "If she is repressing it ... why?" Bruno said.

  "Her story has never made much sense, Bruno. The DA is just going to keep on saying, ’You left your husband bleeding on the couch and went to bed? You didn’t remember him until morning?’ I believed her, in spite of everything. But now... Bruno, you taped her confession right there at UC. Please ... don’t try to soften anything for me. Did she kill her husband, or not?"

  "There are some inconsistencies in that confession, as you know, Nina, and the young lady is suffering from strong underlying guilt, some of which arises out of old events in her past. These feelings are enough, I believe, given her current vulnerability and the sensitive nature of her therapy, which was left hanging, to make it possible that she is accepting blame in some symbolic, not literal sense."

  "Well, how about this new convenient memory loss? She denies that she had sexual relations with someone other than the men she has named. That’s a lie. The DNA tests prove she was with someone."

  "If you want to believe her, you could think like this: Maybe one of the DNA tests is incorrect. Then she would not be lying," Bruno said. Nina leaned back in her chair, holding the cordless phone against her cheek, feeling like Bruno had handed her a good idea.

  "You mean one of them was faked? Not Anthony’s sample, unless the El Dorado County sheriffs department was involved. So ... how do you fake a DNA analysis, Bruno?"

  "I can do it the layman’s way," Bruno said. "I can send in someone else’s skin or hair or whatever they used as the sample."

  "Blood in these cases, but that does sound like a small possibility. Thanks for this idea, Bruno. Now I’ll have to get another sample from Tom Clarke and Stephen Rossmoor. I expect Clarke will refuse, and it will take ages to get a court order. So I’ll get Paul to help. And this time I’m going to collect samples from every male connected with this case. Paul can go down to Fresno and get something from Mr. Tengstedt just to remove the possibility of an ugly surprise there."

  "You mean you will obtain samples surreptitiously? How?"

  "Let me see, it says right here in my bedside reading, almost anything will do as a test sample: skin, blood, hair, saliva, semen...."

  "I hope you realize that this could be a rather dangerous undertaking. Have you learned who told the authorities about my session with Michelle?"

  "No. It could have been Jeffrey Riesner. He’s a lawyer up here who represents Dr. Greenspan. I told Dr. Greenspan about the session. He might have passed the news on to Riesner. Or it could have been Stephen Rossmoor, the manager at Prize’s. I just can’t see any of them trying to kill us, running us off the road, maybe killing the wrong person in Reno."

  "You are being careful?"

  Nina thought gratefully about the people who were watching out for her: Matt, Andrea, and Collier, even Sandy’s son Wish, whom she still glimpsed now and then as she went about her business. "Yes. I have help. And Michelle seems safe at home. Speaking of home, I seem to have almost forgotten the reason I called you."

  "I often have that effect on lawyers," Bruno said. "Excuse me a moment. I’ll be back."

  "I’ll be here." He was gone for several minutes. Nina doodled a picture of Michelle, dream lady, liar, trouble following her around like a monkey on a chain.

  "Sorry. Intermission for my pills," Bruno said into the phone. "Why did you call, then, my dear?"

  Nina explained about Aunt Alice, the fax to Subic, and the payroll records. She told Bruno about her phone call that morning to Barbara Tengstedt, and the reaction.

  "Here’s how I feel, Bruno. I want to tell Michelle. The Tengstedts won’t take the responsibility. If she knows this much, she’ll force the rest out of them."

  "You’d like to do that," Bruno said. "You can’t tolerate the ambiguity. You want to charge into the field of defenses and secrets and lay about you with your lance of truth."

  Feeling slightly foolish, Nina said, "Yes, but I did have sense enough to call you first. I know she’s got a psychiatric problem, though God knows nobody seems to be able to put a nice, clean label on it. I know she’s under tremendous stress from the coming trial and the uncertainty of the future, and worrying about the baby. That’s why I’m calling you."

  "For absolution," Bruno said softly.

  "How’s that?"

  "So you can tell yourself you asked me. It doesn’t matter what my advice is, Nina. You will not be able to keep this to yourself."

  "I do want to know what you think, Bruno."

  "I think you are right to tell her," Bruno said.

  "I want to do more than that," Nina said. "If her parents won’t tell her the rest, and she doesn’t remember after learning this, I want to call Barbara Tengstedt to testify at the trial. And I am going to ask her under oath about Michelle’s past, make her tell her secret in open court."

  "I admire your courage," Bruno said. "But please, don’t do that until you have obtained Michelle’s permission."

  Nina thought about this. He
was absolutely right.

  "Bruno ..."

  "Yes, my dear," he said with that unfailing patience the university would never find in a younger replacement.

  "Do you suspect what happened to Michelle? When she was a child?"

  "If you don’t mind a wild stab."

  "Please."

  "She hurt her daddy, Nina, and he never came back."

  "But how?" Nina asked, hiding her frustration. "Emotionally or physically? With a polar bear statue to the head?"

  "That doesn’t matter. Don’t ask how. Ask why he never came back."

  24

  THE TRIAL LOOMED. Jury selection would commence the following Monday. In the midst of the long hours of preparation, Nina thought about Bruno’s words. She read Freud and Jung each night after she climbed wearily into her bed, falling asleep to Kafkaesque dreams of trials, castles, and imprisonment.

  After five months of activity into every nook of fact, she knew little more than she had when Michelle first told her the story of the night Anthony disappeared. She reread the reports, drawing diagrams of the living room and the boat. She drew her nine dots in three rows and tried a new series of triangles.

  Nothing new came to mind.

  Paul was busy all Tuesday. He ran into Sandy on her way out at five. "Don’t do nothing I wouldn’t do," Sandy said. She punched him on the arm as he passed.

  "She likes you. Did you have good luck?" Nina greeted him smoothly. Only an intimacy of eyes passed between them in reference to their last informal meeting.

  "If accumulating locks of men’s hair is good luck. Played dodgeball with the janitor and snagged some of Tom Clarke’s off his chair in the principal’s office and ran into Rossmoor at the casino. Knocked him down in the hall. Think he appreciated it when I helped him up and brushed off his collar for him, although his security guards didn’t."

  "What about Tengstedt?"

  "Yeah. Fresno at 109 degrees. I finally met our client, the famous Misty. She was propped under a tree in the front yard with an icy drink, long legs under the sprinklers, a chrysanthemum, lush and summery. I now get it about Tom Clarke and that noodle Rossmoor. I had to restrain the impulse to suck her toes. Her mother gave me a glass of lemonade and disappeared. I made up some news about the case for Misty, used the facilities, and ripped hair off the male comb." He handed her a brown paper sack, which crinkled as she set it on the table. "The whole world in a drop of water, or in this case, a strand of hair. Everything’s labeled. I hope it’s not the father, I mean, Carl Tengstedt. That’s a gruesome thought you have there."