Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You

by Laurie Lynn Drummond

  A plainclothes officer with short, sandy blond hair, lightly pockmarked skin, and rimless glasses came into the room carrying a small black leather bag in his plastic-gloved hand. He was handsome in an uncommon way; his energy and confidence filled the room. I smiled and nodded, but he ignored me.

  “What’s that?” Marjorie gasped. “I can’t see.”

  “A purse,” the officer said. “We found it one house over.”

  “He wanted money?” she said.

  “We need to move her,” one of the paramedics said.

  I stood, but Marjorie didn’t let go of my hand.

  “I’ll be with you all the way. Don’t worry.” I smiled at her again and carefully removed my hand.

  The plainclothes officer took several steps back. “Where did you leave your purse, Ms. LaSalle?”

  “The stereo speaker, just inside the door.” Her shoulders flexed forward with the effort to bring forth each word.

  “You sure?”

  Her head bobbed once as the paramedics eased her to the edge of the bed. “Always in the same place,” she said.

  “I do that too,” I said and immediately regretted allowing such inane words to come from my mouth.

  The officer looked at me without raising his head. “You new?”

  “Cathy Stevens. With Victim Services.”

  “Yeah, kind of guessed that from your shirt.” He wrote something in his notebook. “Young, aren’t you?” he said, more dismissal than interest to his question. “There is no sign of forced entry to your house, Ms. LaSalle. Are you sure your front door was locked when you went to bed?”

  Marjorie’s face went momentarily still, the knife hilt moving with each inhale exhale. “I, I think so, I’m almost positive.”

  “Well it isn’t now,” he said. “The responding officer found it ajar when he arrived.”

  “We need a hand here,” a paramedic said, and two uniformed officers stepped forward. Marjorie’s face twisted as the men bumped her onto the gurney. One of them finally pulled a sheet up over her, leaving just her left breast exposed.

  The plainclothes officer shook his head, wrote some more. “All your windows are locked; the back door is unlocked but with no sign of tampering; we haven’t found any blood transfer yet; nothing seems to be missing but the contents of your purse.” His voice was devoid of emotion, almost as though he were dictating into a tape recorder. I wondered if he was this way on all his calls, what made him so detached. “Kind of strange.”

  Mucus ran from her nostrils. I came around the bed, pulled a tissue from my back pocket, reached across the gurney and wiped her nose.

  “Don’t touch anything,” the plainclothes officer snapped.

  I flinched, stepped away, wondering if he meant Marjorie or the bed.

  “I don’t understand.” Marjorie’s hands gripped the edge of the gurney.

  I smiled, whispered, “It’s okay.”

  “Actually, it’s not,” he said.

  “Okay.” I fought to keep my voice from quavering, cursed the flush I knew had just appeared on my face. Did he not like women or just people in general?

  “I,” the officer said, still writing in his notebook, “am the detective in charge of this case.” He clipped his pen to the top of the notebook and folded his arms. “Robileaux. Detective Ray Robileaux. With Homicide.”

  “Homicide?” The word slipped out before I could stop it. Robileaux gave me a long, steady look but didn’t answer.

  “We’re out of here,” a paramedic said, and Robileaux nodded, asked, “The General or the Lake?”

  “She said the General; she’s got privileges there.”

  “Privileges?” Robileaux’s forehead folded into confusion.

  “I’m a psychologist,” Marjorie said, each syllable coming slowly. She looked at me and fresh tears welled up. “I work with teenagers.”

  “A psychologist,” Robileaux said, and jotted something down in his notepad.

  “You’re coming?” She twisted her head slightly to look at me as the paramedics maneuvered the gurney to the door.

  “In my car. Right behind you.”

  Another, younger plainclothes officer with an ample stomach came to the doorway and whispered something into Robileaux’s ear. His black hair was slicked back, and he wore a cream-colored polo shirt under his brown jacket. Marjorie watched them, panting through an open mouth.

  “Have you found something?” she asked. “Have you found him?”

  “Detective Hebert, ma’am,” the younger man said. “We found the contents of your purse.” His voice was soft, and, unlike Robileaux, he actually looked at her while he spoke.

  “Everything except for cash,” Robileaux said. “Do you remember how much you had in it?”

  Raised voices came from the front of the house. “I need to see her,” a man’s voice said sharply.

  “Cesar?” Marjorie lifted her head, tried to look past the paramedic. “I called him. Please let him in.”

  “You called him?” Robileaux said.

  “After I called you.”

  Robileaux hesitated a second, then barely nodded to Hebert.

  “Let him come on back, Charlie,” Hebert hollered.

  “Cesar, that Mexican?” Robileaux asked.

  A small, compact man hurried down the hallway, dressed in black jeans and a blue T-shirt. His hair was long and curly, his complexion dark.

  “I’m here.” Cesar leaned over the gurney, but didn’t touch her.

  “Look what happened to little Pollyanna.” Marjorie brushed his arm with the back of her hand. It struck me as an odd thing to say.

  “How did this happen?” There was only a hint of an accent to his voice.

  “We’ve got to move this woman now,” a paramedic said.

  Cesar nodded and turned to follow them, but Robileaux reached out a hand. Cesar looked at the officers, his face frantic. “What happened? I need to go with her. Is she going to be all right?”

  “Well, sir, that’s what we’re trying to determine. What’s your name?”

  “Cesar Campos. Will she be all right?”

  “When did you last talk with Ms. LaSalle, Mr. Campos?”

  “Earlier today. Well, when she called me tonight, but I saw her earlier today, at her office. She was fine then.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said, not knowing how to interrupt or leave gracefully. I introduced myself, told Cesar what hospital Marjorie was going to.

  “This is really unbelievable.” Cesar stood stiffly, his hands jammed in the back pockets of his jeans.

  “I think you’re done here, Miss Stevens.” Robileaux’s look was unnerving, and I felt myself flush again.

  Detective Hebert rested a hand lightly on my back. “Why don’t you come with me, ma’am.”

  “Cathy,” I said, pulling away from his touch.

  “Josh Hebert.” He extended his hand when we reached the living room, and I took it reluctantly. It was smooth and warm, and he smelled faintly of a cologne I recognized. “We always appreciate having someone from Victim Services, Cathy.”

  “I don’t think he appreciates my presence much.”

  “Ray? Oh, he can be a bulldog, but he’s a good detective.” Hebert opened the screen door for me, and I shivered, even though the night air was heavy and close.

  “First time for something like this?”

  “Yes.” I looked out at the street. Most of the neighbors had gone back inside.

  “It’s always unsettling the first few times.”

  “Do you get used to it?”

  “Not really.” He smiled, and a dimple appeared high on his cheek, under his right eye. “But you learn to see it in a different way, not feel it so much.”

  I rubbed a thumb over the outside seam on my jeans. “And how do you do that?”

  He shrugged. “You just learn. Happens over time.” He slapped a thin spiral notebook lightly against his leg. “You got everything you need here?”

  I nodded. “Thanks for walking
me out.”

  “We’ll probably see you over there in a bit. And don’t worry about Ray. He’s just having a rough night.”

  Not as rough as Marjorie LaSalle, I thought, standing beside my car after Hebert had gone back inside. An errant blue jay chirped from a huge magnolia tree across the street. The ambulance and fire truck had left, along with some of the police cars. By morning, you’d never know anything had happened here, the neighborhood back to normal. Except the woman who lived in this house, of course. I wondered how Marjorie LaSalle could ever return here. If she lived.

  I’d wanted to work in law enforcement since I was a child, probably the result of too much television. I’d watched Mission Impossible, I Spy, Streets of San Francisco, Police Woman, Cagney and Lacey, and Hill Street Blues with a passion bordering on religion. My favorite characters were Christine Cagney, and Sergeant Lucy Bates on Hill Street Blues—they seemed the most realistic: tough, independent, smart. And they had integrity; they held their own in a man’s world.

  I graduated with a degree in criminal justice from LSU, despite withering comments from my older sisters, my father’s bewildered “But what are your goals, what do you want to do with this?” my mother’s quiet “If that’s what you want to do,” my grandmother’s “You’ll never marry into a good family doing that,” my friends’ puzzled looks. Five months ago I’d taken and passed the required battery of psychological and physical agility tests, the civil service and physical exam, the interviews necessary to be accepted as a police cadet. In less than two months, I would enter the 50th Basic Training Academy of the Baton Rouge Police Department.

  But I wanted more experience, something beyond classroom learning. So I’d enrolled in the training for Victim Services, an eight-week program designed to help victims of crime or crisis. Mostly we soothed, provided a friendly face, allowed the professionals—the police, firefighters, paramedics—to do their job without having to attend to civilians’ emotional needs.

  What I wanted was to see. I knew nothing about the world. My life had been relatively calm and safe, sheltered even. A friend dead in high school from an overdose, another friend’s father murdered, a waitress at work robbed at gunpoint—but these events affected me only peripherally. I needed to see the unspeakable now, if only to reassure myself that I could see.

  But what do you do with the feelings, I wondered, as I pulled into the crowded ER parking lot. The sight of Marjorie LaSalle hadn’t made me sick to my stomach, hadn’t sent me fleeing, hadn’t made me probe my own vulnerability or made me frightened for my safety as a woman living alone. I’d felt responsible for her, a fierce, hot responsibility that arose from some deep, unfamiliar place.

  A nurse directed me to Marjorie’s cubicle. I walked around the corner and stopped. She lay naked on the bed, the curtains to her area thrown wide, visible to anyone walking by. A catheter tube ran from between her legs. A police photographer took pictures of her, close-ups. Two doctors and four nurses were crowded into the tiny space, and she tracked their movements with her eyes, barely turning her head. She had a gorgeous body, if you ignored the knife hilt protruding from her upper chest.

  “Just this one stab wound to the left subclavicular thorax. Looks like a slight left to right angle.”

  “Just?” A nurse shook her head.

  One doctor probed her breast. “We got another wound here, about two inches deep, under the left breast,” he said.

  “Really?” Marjorie said. “I don’t feel it.” Her words slurred, and her right hand twitched, as though she were tempted to locate the injury.

  “Must have just missed the major aortic branches.”

  “X rays show the lungs are clear.”

  “Won’t know until we get in there.”

  “Okay, let’s get her prepped and up to surgery.”

  The room cleared out somewhat, and I moved so I was in Marjorie’s sight line.

  She squinted, turned her head slightly. “Who’s there?”

  “Cathy,” I said. “From earlier, at the house.” Before I’d finished talking, she extended a hand.

  “Kind of laid out for the whole world to see, aren’t I?”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “Doesn’t really matter. Just the body. They’re doing what they can.” Her breathing barely moved the knife now. “It’s started to hurt, really hurt. Funny how it didn’t hurt until I was in the ambulance.”

  “It’s the shock.”

  “You’ve been very kind.”

  “It’s what I’m here for.”

  “No. It’s you. I can tell.”

  I patted her hand. “What are these scars here on your arm?”

  “Gymnastics,” she said. “Fell from the high bars when I was fourteen.” Her eyes almost closed, and her voice sounded thin. “Guess I’m going to have a whole new set now, aren’t I?”

  I patted her hand again, and for a few minutes we stayed like that, in silence, as two nurses worked around her.

  Before they whisked her down the hall to the elevator, I took down the names of the people she wanted contacted: her parents, ex-husband, someone at work. I promised I’d wait. That I’d be there when she got out of surgery. I had no idea what I was promising. She was in surgery over seven hours, and I didn’t see her again until just past noon when those of us who had been waiting—her parents, all four of her brothers, an amazing number of extended relatives, and me—gathered outside her room in Intensive Care to hear the doctors’ report.

  The doctors told us that only in surgery had they discovered her esophagus had been completely severed as well, and so they had gone in through her back, collapsed her lungs, and sewn it back together. That the knife blade had been situated between the right subclavian and the left common carotid vessels, with the serrated edge directly abutting the aortic arch. That a great deal of force was required to remove the knife, which had been embedded in the deep tissue along the paravertebral region. That, basically, it was amazing she’d survived—both the stabbing and the surgery.

  Marjorie was woozy and disoriented, but she smiled at us.

  “My daughter never gives up,” her father said, his tall, lean frame bending over to kiss her on the forehead. A tiny gold boxing glove dangled from his neck, brushed her cheek. “Never,” her father repeated.

  When I visited her two days later, winding my way through the labyrinth of the hospital’s icy pink halls, I stopped, puzzled by the name taped to what I thought was her door. Celia Flores. Had they moved her? Had I forgotten her correct room number? Then the door swung open and a nurse stepped out, Marjorie’s voice trailing a thin “thank you” behind her.

  The head of her hospital bed was barely elevated, the TV turned off, the room filled with baskets of flowers, stuffed animals, cards, and one big heart-shaped balloon. Tragedy made cheery. For the first time, Marjorie LaSalle looked exhausted.

  “What’s with the Celia Flores on your door?” I asked.

  “Did you see the paper this morning? They printed my name in it. My name! And the name of the hospital. In the paper, that I’d been stabbed, sexually assaulted. What if he sees it, what if the man who did this sees it and reads that I gave a description of him to the police and comes looking for me here?” The words tumbled out fast, like a child’s anxious recitation.

  “No!” I sat in the chair beside her bed, put my hand on her arm. The paper never printed rape victims’ names; it just wasn’t done.

  “So they’ve given me a new name, taken my name off all the public records. I told them they had to do something. I’m so scared. What if he comes back?”

  “You’re safe here,” I said automatically. I didn’t mention where my mind had immediately gone: her name, in the phone book. But then he already knew where she lived, didn’t he?

  “My brothers are at my house. Packing. I can’t live there anymore.” She shuddered, closed her eyes. “Robileaux’s meeting them. He was here earlier. Asking questions. I don’t like him much.”

  “Me either,”
I admitted.

  She opened her eyes, and we grinned at each other.

  “Why are all the cute ones jerks?”

  “Genetics, I suppose,” I answered.

  “Ummmm. Celia Flores. That’s a pretty name, isn’t it?”

  “Very pretty,” I said.

  “I like how it feels in my mouth. Celia Flores.” She said the name slowly, rolling the vowels around in her mouth like a cat stretching.

  “How are you doing? Much pain?”

  She nodded. “Some. I’m just so scared.” She closed her eyes then snapped them open again, grabbed my hand. “You believe me, don’t you? You believe me?”

  “But—well, of course I do.” I stared at her, puzzled.

  “Breathe, just breathe,” she whispered and took deep, long breaths. “I’m alive, and it’s over. The worst is over, isn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  Detective Ray Robileaux decided that Marjorie LaSalle’s injury was self-inflicted.

  I didn’t learn this from him, of course, but from Marjorie when I visited her at the hospital during her eleven-day stay and then for weeks afterward when she’d call me, often late at night, long rambling phone calls during which she was weeping, infuriated, or tightly calm. I simply listened. Perhaps I was foolish to give her my phone number. But I couldn’t say no to her.

  Robileaux based his decision on a number of facts. His suspicion started with the lack of evidence at the crime scene to substantiate the claim of an intruder. No sign of forced entry, but okay, maybe she’d forgotten to lock her door; happened all the time. No fingerprints were found—not a single one, not Marjorie’s or her children’s or her ex-husband’s or Cesar’s—the house was clean. No fingerprints even on the second, smaller kitchen knife lying on her nightstand. This was quite strange, alarming really, both the existence of a second knife in that location and the absence of fingerprints. No blood transfer; the perp had to have gotten blood on him someplace, somehow, stabbing her, handling her body. But there was no blood on her purse or anywhere else in the house except the phone and the bed. No evidence of her crawling across the bed to retrieve the phone from the floor—shouldn’t there have been blood on the rug? This too was quite strange, a strong tip-off that things might not be the way they first appeared. And the intruder’s MO was unusual: he stabbed her once brutally, didn’t rape her, left, came back, perhaps with the second knife, and what? Just nicked her breast? But there was no blood on that knife, no fingerprints. Why would he have come back; he didn’t hear her on the phone? It was odd he fled simply because Marjorie asked him if he was wearing a condom.