The Fifth Reflection

by Ellen Kirschman

  As soon as I get to headquarters, I go to the personnel and training department and ask to see Manny’s file. My ex, Mark, did Manny’s pre-employment interview. Whatever I can say about Mark and his former intern and now current wife, Melinda, they wrote good reports. The full psych report is online in the city’s Human Services department. All I need is a paper summary sheet that the PD keeps for its own purposes. The on-duty personnel secretary is not too happy to be interrupted. Judging from her voluminous sighs as she removes the key from its hiding place and blocks my view of the open file drawer, the poor woman is carrying the weight of every employee, past, present, and prospective, on her shoulders. She hands me Manny’s file with the admonition that I cannot take it out of the office nor can I remove any material. What she fails to do is offer me a chair.

  Manny’s file is thin, mostly commendations and letters of appreciation. There’s a personal information sheet with instructions for funeral arrangements and beneficiaries should Manny be killed in the line of duty. Filling out this form and keeping it up to date is a practice I instituted when I started working for KPD. Nothing complicates grief more than finding out your dead husband left everything to his first wife.

  The pre-employment summary sheet is basically a checklist of potential areas of concern to the psychologist and a statement about the applicant’s stability. Psychologists don’t comment on suitability or make hiring recommendations—that’s up to the chief. Mark would have asked about childhood abuse and his testing would have exposed unresolved trauma. I scan the sheet. There are no checked boxes. I hand the file back to the secretary, who appears annoyed that after going to all that trouble to give me the file, I haven’t spent more time examining its contents.

  I’m relieved. I don’t want Manny to have been a child victim. Manny is a hardworking officer, not the star of some grade B novel where the hero’s actions can be explained away by a secret, single traumatic incident. Dedication is dedication. Why am I trying to twist it into a neurotic manifestation of childhood abuse? My father’s voice echoes in my ear so loudly I wonder if anyone walking by me in the hall can hear him.

  “Cops become cops because if they didn’t they’d be crooks. You don’t grow up in a normal household so you can beat people up for a living.” My father was wrong, of course. Cops become cops, not because they want to beat people up, but because they want to make a difference in the world. He was right about one thing. Too many of the cops I’ve interviewed over the years have come from dysfunctional families. Putting on a uniform makes them feel safer. Protecting others from abuse infuses their own victimization with meaning and purpose.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  JJ IS FIRST to be interviewed. I take my seat on the observer’s side of the one-way mirror. Manny is standing at attention, a paper album of mug shots on the conference table in front of him. Unlike the cop shows on TV, there’s no computer, no high-tech digital imaging, nothing to suggest that he works in Silicon Valley. This is the real world, not CSI.

  The door to the conference room opens and Pence walks in with JJ followed by Pence’s secretary holding a tray of coffee, water, and cookies. Manny and JJ shake hands in a pantomime of civility. I switch on the speaker. Pence is falling all over himself with apologies. He’s sorry about a number of things, inconveniencing JJ, cutting into her day by asking her to look at these mug shots, causing her to revisit such a painful time. He apologizes for everything but the abysmal failure to find her daughter’s murderer. JJ doesn’t react or respond to anything he says. She simply settles in her seat and sips water until he excuses himself and backs out of the room, fawning all the way.

  A minute later, the door to the observation room opens and Pence comes in. He looks at my open notebook and facial action coding sheets.

  “Manny tried to explain what you’re doing. I didn’t get it. That’s why I told him you could observe, but only if I was in the room with you. Just give me the Cliff Notes while he’s giving JJ instructions.”

  “I’m looking for micro-expressions, subtle movements that occur often in less than a second. Like now, what you just did with your eyebrows tells me that you are trying to conceal something.”

  “Like the feeling that you’re feeding me some new-age psychobabble BS?”

  “Yes. Those feelings.”

  He sits down.

  “Actually, there’s nothing new age about this. Recording universal expressions of emotion started with Darwin who coded seven emotions—anger, fear, disgust, surprise, enjoyment, sadness, and contentment.”

  “So which one was I?”

  “Somewhere between anger and disgust.”

  He laughs. More of a snort.

  “The system is not without its problems, the most challenging being the difficulty discerning whether a person is deliberately lying or unconsciously concealing their real feelings from themselves.”

  Pence puts his fingers to his lips. “Here we go.”

  Manny places the album in front of JJ as though he were handling a rare and delicate book. JJ starts to turn the pages. She works slowly, deliberately, bending over each photo, her long braid obscuring her face. Manny flicks his eyes toward us and shakes his head.

  Pence puts his face next to my ear. “See that expression? That means no progress.”

  Ten minutes pass in silence. I’m beginning to wonder if I have the patience to sit through this when JJ sits up, grasps the side of her chair, and twists, first toward us and then away. She looks up at Manny and smiles. “My back hurts. Sorry.”

  “Can I get you something? More water?”

  “Water would be lovely. Thank you.”

  Manny leaves the room. JJ flips her braid over her shoulder and bends to the book, carefully turning back two pages. Manny returns with a bottle of water, opens it, and sets it on the table. Pence picks up his cell phone. Manny excuses himself to answer. A minute later he’s in the room with us and Pence is on his feet.

  “The minute you left the room to get water, she flipped back two pages. Ask her if she recognized someone.”

  “Too direct,” I say. “Don’t put her on the spot. Tell her you noticed she turned back a few pages. Ask her if there is something bothering her. Anything you need to know.”

  Manny looks at Pence for permission. Pence shrugs.

  By the time Manny reenters the room, JJ has closed the book and is sitting quietly with her hands on the cover. Her eyes are closed and her mouth is a smooth crescent.

  “Anything I need to know, Ms. Juliette?” He sits down next to her so she has to turn toward him with her face in full view of the one-way mirror.

  “These photos are amazing. Fascinating. Such detail. The range of expressions from contempt to fear to I-don’t-know-what. This is a treasure trove of portraiture. I’m wondering if you have more of these and if I might borrow them. I can imagine assembling a collage of faces. It would be very powerful.”

  Manny’s eyebrows scramble across his forehead. “Don’t know. I’d need permission.” He stumbles over his words. “Did you recognize anyone?”

  She shakes her head and sighs. “I’m sorry. I can see I’ve disappointed you. As a photographer, I’m used to studying people’s faces. I’m sure if I’d seen any of these men before, even briefly, I would have remembered.”

  JJ stands and extends her hand to Manny. “Thank you for all your efforts. Please thank the police chief, too.”

  “I may need you to come back again to look at more photos.”

  She lapses into herself for a moment, eyes closed. “I do appreciate all you’re doing, but please don’t ask me to do that. I could look at a thousand mug shots if I was creating an art project. But it’s very different and quite disturbing to be looking at these men thinking one of them might have killed my daughter. I don’t mean to be uncooperative, but I need to move on with my life.”

  “I understand this is painful for you, Ms. Juliette. I wouldn’t ask you to do this except that the man who murdered Chrissy is still out there.
As long as he’s out there, other people’s daughters are in jeopardy.”

  “I would never want to see another child harmed or another parent go through what Bucky and I have gone through. But life is full of suffering and there’s little you or I can do to prevent it.”

  Manny’s eyebrows pull down. His lips fuse into an angry line. “I don’t get it. Don’t you want to see this creep punished for what he did to your daughter?”

  JJ backs away, just a little.

  “You may find this hard to understand, but I refuse to live a life of ill will. I prefer to spend my life with loving-kindness and compassion.”

  “So you’re telling me you’re not angry.”

  “What I am is sad, heartbroken, and agonized. Desperately longing to touch Chrissy, to hold her, kiss her. But I am not angry.”

  And now I see it. The corrugated lines around her eyes pulling down on her eyebrows at the same time her lips tighten to thin red margins. She’s lying. I make notes. My only question is whether she is deliberately masking her anger or hiding it from herself.

  “Did you hear that?” Manny’s face is red. His lips bared. “She’ll come back but only if I give her mug shots for an art project. When John Walsh’s son was kidnapped and murdered, he spent the rest of his life helping to find missing children. That woman whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver founded Mothers Against Drunk Driving. This bitch just wants to sit on her meditation pillow and think kind thoughts about the man who murdered her daughter. What the hell is that all about?”

  Pence puts his hand on Manny’s shoulder. “You’re a little too agitated. If you want out of the next two interviews, I’ll do them myself.”

  Manny stiffens. “Don’t pull me off the case, boss. Next interview is not until tomorrow. I’ll be good to go.”

  “I’m going to make sure of that. Go home. Now. I’m ordering you out of the building.”

  I want to warn Pence that being at home won’t stop Manny from working the case or that, given the tension between Manny and Lupe, home is not a haven.

  Pence claps Manny on the back. “You did a good job in there.”

  “I lost it.”

  “No you didn’t. Your timing may have been a little off. It’s understandable. The mother’s a hard case. Ask the doc—she’s been writing down numbers and letters like crazy.” He gives Manny a collegial squeeze on the shoulder. “You and I. We don’t need hieroglyphics, do we? With all due respect, Dr. Meyerhoff, even a blind man could see that, underneath all that nicey-nicey stuff, Ms. JoAnn Juliette is hiding something big.”

  I walk Manny to his car. He’s disgusted with himself, convinced that he so alienated JJ she’ll stop cooperating. I tell him that’s catastrophic thinking. He doesn’t know what she’ll do in the future. Neither do I. He opens the door to his car.

  “What is it, Doc? I can tell, you’ve got something on your mind.”

  “I’ve been thinking about you. How this case seems to be eclipsing everything else in your life. I’m wondering if there’s anything personal about it?”

  “What do you mean personal?”

  “Something that happened to you. Some wrong you’d like to set right. Something you’ve never told another soul.”

  “Like was I molested as a child? You sound like Lupe. She asked me the same question.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That she’s been watching too many novellas on the TV.”

  Where JJ’s wardrobe is artsy and edgy, Kathryn Blazek’s taste in clothing tends toward the school of fashion favored by politicians’ wives, knit suits with big pins, her hair sprayed into a wavy nest. She digs a pair of reading glasses out of her purse and carefully unfolds them. Pence inquires if she has enough light, would she like another cup of coffee, a different chair perhaps? He’s treating her like a guest, not a witness. Or a suspect. She’s the wife of a powerful man with a dead daughter whose killer he hasn’t caught. The situation calls for a little extra finesse.

  “I’m a bit nervous,” Kathryn says. “I’m not very good at remembering faces or names. It can be quite embarrassing.” She smiles. Only the muscles around her mouth move. Genuine smiles involve the orbicularis oculi, a muscle that raises the cheeks and creates crow’s feet around the eyes. I warn myself not to jump to conclusions. It would be hard for anyone to be genuinely happy when asked to identify a child killer in a police station under the watchful eyes of the chief of police and who-knows-who sitting behind an obviously one-way mirror.

  “Well then,” she says, still smiling. “Whenever you’re ready.”

  Pence thanks her again for being so helpful. His smile looks as fake as hers.

  Manny enters the room as Pence leaves. He looks way more rested than he did yesterday. He’s wearing a sports jacket, a collared shirt, and a tie. His hair is shower-wet. Marks from his comb run in parallel tracks through his glossy black hair.

  Pence opens the door to the observation room and sits down next to me, arms crossed over his chest, legs stretched in front of him. All that he’s missing is a ball cap and a hot dog.

  “Looks better today, doesn’t he? Glad I decided to send him home.”

  I start to respond and stop when Manny lays the album in front of Kathryn. He asks if she has spoken to JJ since yesterday.

  “Poor woman. Did she have to look at these photographs, too?”

  She puts on her reading glasses, adjusts them, and pats the hair around her ears searching for any unruly bits poking out from under the temple pieces. Manny opens the album.

  Kathryn’s pace is slow and deliberate. She tracks her place with the index finger of her left hand. The overhead light splinters reflections from her diamond wedding band into multicolored fragments that splay across the ceiling. Five, then ten, minutes pass. I look for fine movements in her face. A slight wrinkle in her nose, a downward tug at the corners of her mouth. Nothing. It’s like she’s looking through a book of upholstery swatches, not the faces of men who do hideous things to innocent children. She takes off her glasses, folds them in half, and puts them back into a hard-metal cylindrical case. “I’m sorry, but I don’t believe I know any of these men.”

  Don’t believe or don’t know? She’s skirting the question the same way she did when I asked her about buying the blanket at the Dollar Store. She never said yes and she never said no.

  She picks up her purse and stands. “I do wish I could be of more help. My eyesight isn’t what it used to be. I think I need something stronger than over-the-counter reading glasses these days. I told your chief that I’m terrible at remembering faces anyway. It’s quite embarrassing not to remember someone I’ve met the week before. We all forget names. But faces?” She shakes her head in mock self-disgust. She’s going on longer than she needs to, producing extraneous information that means nothing. Her words float aimlessly like confetti in a ticker-tape parade. I wish I knew what was under her chirpy patter or hidden behind a face so motionless it might have been cosmetically frozen with Botox.

  An hour later, Bucky bangs his way into the conference room, irritation written all over his face. Pence offers his hand and Bucky just looks at it. Same with the coffee, cookies, and water.

  “I’m a busy man. Let’s just get this over with.”

  “Too busy to help us find his daughter’s murderer?” Manny is standing next to me, looking through the one-way mirror, waiting for his cue to enter the conference room.

  “I am sorry to inconvenience you,” Pence says. “Your cooperation is appreciated.”

  “I wouldn’t have to be here if you were doing your job.”

  Pence winces. “I understand your frustration—”

  “No you don’t. Don’t pretend to. It’s not your daughter who’s dead.”

  “My apologies. I didn’t mean to infer—”

  “Can we get on with this?” Bucky yanks a chair from the table and sits facing the one-way mirror.

  “Certainly.” Pence takes a chair, positioning himself at a right angle t
o avoid staring into Bucky’s face. “The reason I’ve asked you to meet with our investigator is that we have developed some additional suspects. We need you to look at this set of photos and tell us if you recognize anyone. We’ve already showed these pictures to Ms. Juliette and to your wife. Have you spoken to either of them about their experience?”

  “I don’t talk to JoAnn and I haven’t seen my wife for two days. I’ve been away on business. I just got home this morning.” He looks at his watch.

  “So you don’t know if they did or did not recognize anyone.”

  Bucky shakes his head.

  “Are you aware that your wife has difficulty with faces because her eyesight is poor?”

  Bucky hesitates for a second. “She wears reading glasses.” He shakes his head again, more forcefully. “Are we going to get on with this anytime soon?”

  Manny starts to open the door of the observation room. I stop him. “Ask Bucky if Kathryn has ever had Botox treatments. I’ll explain later.” He shrugs and walks out the door into the conference room. Pence stands, shakes Manny’s hand, and leaves as we rewind back to the beginning. Manny offers his hand to Bucky. Bucky refuses to shake it, looks at his watch, and demands to know when they are going to get started because he’s running out of time and patience.

  Pence opens the door to the observation room and sits down. “Nasty son of a bitch. Likes to throw his weight around.”

  “Thank you for coming in, sir,” Manny says. “I realize you’re a busy man. Before we start, I need to ask if you have discussed these photos with Ms. Juliette or your wife.”

  Bucky throws his head back and his hands in the air. “Don’t you people talk to each other? The chief just asked me the same question two minutes ago and I told him no.”