Dead Man's Thoughts (32 page)

“Oh, why was that?” Button asked, all innocence.

“Because of Brad,” I answered with weary patience. “Linda had to be careful about the men in her life. If Brad ever caught her—” I broke off at the sight of Button's smug smile.

“I didn't say he'd kill her,” I retorted. My defender's instinct was returning. “But he'd have used anything to get custody of Dawn away from Linda.”

“How would he know?” Button asked.

“The man's a fanatic,” I had to admit. “She told me once how he followed her, tapped her phone, went through her garbage. Believe me,” I told Button, “he'd know in a minute if she ever did anything he could use in court. He's a professional ex-husband.” I kept on talking, too engrossed to notice the way Button took it all in, feeding me straight lines, until I'd said more than I intended to. With all my years in the system, I couldn't figure out that I was rapidly becoming the prosecution's star witness.

“Of course,” I went on, “he's not even supposed to know where she lives. If he has to talk to her, he calls Marcy and she calls Linda. Then Linda gets back to him. Visits are the same way. Linda takes Dawn to Marcy's, then leaves. An hour later, Brad comes, takes Dawn, brings her back, and Linda picks her up an hour after that. It's a total pain, Linda says, but it's the only way to avoid contact with Brad.” I was not only unconscious that I was making a formal statement, I was oblivious to the fact that I was still using the present tense.

“I'd say a little contact took place tonight,” Button said grimly. “Before I talked to you, I'd have said she walked in on a burglar, but this fits better. Nothing was taken, even though there's a lot of disarray.” He shook his head. “Besides, that number of stab wounds—hell, no ordinary burglar would do that unless he was on angel dust. But an ex-husband, especially one with a history of wife-beating, he's capable of anything.” I looked at Button curiously. The slightly bitter edge to his tone gave me the feeling he was speaking from experience. But I knew better than to ask.

Button picked up my phone. Automatically, I nodded the permission he hadn't bothered to request. “Where does the sister live?” he asked. “I'll have to get a policewoman to stay with the kid while she identifies the body.”

“You don't need a policewoman,” I said hurriedly. “I'll go with you.”

“Well,” Button looked at me, calculation in his eyes. “You
are
a lawyer, and a friend of the family.” He put down the phone.

If I'd been operating on all eight cylinders, I'd have realized then instead of later that I'd been set up.

I watched Button's face as he rang the doorbell of Marcy Sheldon's East Side apartment. Impassive, schooled, with an underlying tautness that spoke the anxiety his features refused to reveal. How many times, I wondered, had this man stood in a doorway, waiting to bring death inside?

Marcy opened the door and let us in without a word. A tiny woman like her sister, she was different from Linda in every way that mattered. Where Linda had played up her little-girl look, Marcy was strictly dress-for-success. Where Linda had been a self-described man's woman, Marcy ran her own public-relations business and was independent to the point of fanaticism. She was about ten years older than Linda and held herself with the assurance of a much taller woman.

As Marcy motioned us inside, I looked around for Dawn. I didn't see her. What I saw was a standard-issue single professional woman's apartment. Stark white walls, chrome-and-glass tables, track lighting, wall units with smoked glass doors. A blue and green Rya rug. Framed posters of modern art shows from the Whitney and the Guggenheim. The living room struck me as looking about as personal as a corporate conference room.

The funny thing was that Marcy's office was the exact opposite. There she'd gone in for sumptuous upholstery in shades of mauve, black and silver lamps, wonderful Art Deco antiques and highly polished redwood. Vases of peacock feathers and framed 1920s
Vogue
covers had completed the look. It was stunning—and sensuous enough for a boudoir.

Marcy motioned me to the couch. I sat gingerly, not wanting to make myself too much at ease, as though death required some sort of discomfort. I decided Marcy must have furnished her apartment fifteen years earlier and hadn't given the place a second thought since.

She handed me coffee in a thick Danish mug edged with heavy blue stripes. I sipped it gratefully, needing it after the Scotch I'd put away. Marcy drank hers slowly and watched Button with expectant eyes. She'd been told on the phone that Linda was dead, but I didn't know how many details she'd been given.

I wondered how Button would play it. He could be sympathetic or brutal, and his choice would have nothing whatever to do with Marcy Sheldon's needs. Button would say whatever it took to open her up.

He chose the crisply impersonal yet regretful tone of a newscaster describing a four-car collision on the Major Deegan. It wasn't the way I'd have spoken to a woman whose only sister had been stabbed to death in her own apartment, but Marcy visibly relaxed and answered in kind.

Even when they got to the hard stuff, both Button and Marcy never wavered from the six o'clock news version.

“Did your sister have many men friends?” Button inquired, his face the same bland mask he'd worn since entering the apartment.

“I knew she was dating,” Marcy replied, “but I didn't know the details. She was very taken up with her new job, of course,” she added, then shook her head regretfully. “Such a good opportunity,” she commented, as though Linda's murder had been an unfortunate career setback.

“What was her relationship with Congressman Lucenti?”

Marcy flashed me a glance from under mascaraed eyelashes and hesitated only a fraction of a second before replying smoothly, “He was her boss, Detective, nothing more.”

I got the unspoken message. It was time for me to see Dawn. “In the bedroom,” Marcy murmured, pointing to a door. I wondered what she would tell Button once she had me out of the way.

I walked toward the bedroom, my heart pounding. I cracked open the door, suddenly wishing to God I'd kept my stupid mouth shut and stayed in Brooklyn where I belonged. What right had I, I accused myself, to come blundering into this child's grief?

Then I caught hold of myself. I hadn't come as a sightseer; if I weren't here, some faceless lady cop would be pushing open this door. Dawn might as well be harassed by someone she already knew.

I opened the door and stepped into the room. Dawn sat on her bed still as a statue. A trance of grief, I told myself—until I saw the earphones. I tapped lightly on her shoulder, and she turned off the tape-player.

“Do you like the Police?” she asked.

“Well,” I began, startled by the question. “Detective Button's okay.”

“No,” she giggled, her laughter slightly edged with hysteria. “not the police. The Pol
ice
.” She pointed to a cassette.

“Oh, the group,” I said lamely as Dawn continued to stifle nervous laughter. I felt about a hundred and three, remembering my attempt to explain the Rolling Stones to my Grandma Winchell.

“I came to stay with you while your Aunt Marcy …” I broke off, not knowing how to finish. Or maybe the word
morgue
stuck in my throat.

Dawn nodded. While she didn't replace the earphones, she didn't talk either. We sat in silence for a moment, me perched awkwardly on the edge of the bed, my eyes darting around the room in search of something to talk about. A Culture Club poster, two Michael Jacksons, a teddy bear holding a miniature tennis racket, three tennis trophies—Marcy's guest room had been decorated with one guest in mind. A white bedroom suite, with green and yellow accents to match the patchwork comforter on the bed. Remembering the jumble of secondhand furniture in Dawn's own bedroom, I found myself warming to Marcy. She may act like a cold fish, I told myself, but if material things can show love, then she loves her niece. It was the one good thought I'd had since Linda's death. It comforted me as I watched Dawn look longingly at her earphones.

The silence was becoming oppressive. I wanted to say something, but I knew instinctively that what I said had to be exactly right or I'd lose Dawn forever. Twelve is like that.

I relaxed slightly as I recognized the feeling. It was the same one I'd had when I'd started at Legal Aid, sitting in dark pens with accused criminals. For the first time in my comfortable, middle-class life I'd had to communicate with people so different from me as to seem wholly alien. Hell, I snorted silently to myself, I hadn't even known their
names
. Oh, sure, I knew to call them Julio or Anthony, Mr. Ramirez or Ms. Jackson, but those were the names they gave the Man. On the street they were Chico or Freeze or Mr. Cool. Once I'd learned that, I'd begun to loosen up with my clients, to learn their language.

I looked at Dawn. What secret name did she go by? What was the key to her private language? I tried to reach back in time to my own twelve-year-old self. Then I factored in Nathan. Less than a year earlier, I'd had to come to terms with the murder of my lover. What I'd needed as much as—more than—sympathy, had been truth, solid, rock-bottom truth—no lies, no sugar coating. My momentary question about Dawn's ability to handle truth evaporated when I recalled how many harsh realities she'd already faced in her life.

Suddenly I knew what to say. The words that had carried me through ten years at Legal Aid. The words that had started as an office joke, then became a catch phrase, and finally a summing up of the whole criminal-law experience. “It's a tough business,” I said, keeping my voice as neutral as possible. The words themselves would mean nothing, but I hoped the tone would be more welcome than the phony sympathy she was probably expecting.

Dawn stopped biting her lips. Her tortured mouth relaxed into a brief smile of relief. She picked up a phosphorescent-yellow tennis ball and began squeezing it with her right hand. It was a strengthening exercise, but she used it the way her father had used his fist-slapping movement—to relieve the tension. It seemed a step forward.

“Did you find the body?” Dawn asked.

I cleared my throat. This honesty stuff was going to be harder than I thought. “No,” I answered. “I came home just as the medics were taking her out.”

“Who called the cops?” Her muscles knotted and relaxed, knotted and relaxed as her strong hand squeezed the ball.

“I don't know. Nobody does. Detective Button told me there was a 911 call, ‘Burglary in progress.' Whoever called didn't leave a name.”

Dawn's face relaxed from within. It was the same look she'd given her father in Family Court, when he'd finally agreed to the tennis camp.

“Burglary,” she said. It sounded like a sigh. “Just some crummy stupid junkie who killed my mother for the TV.”

She'd obviously seen a lot of six o'clock news programs, I thought. I would have given a lot to be able to leave it there, to agree with her that it had been a crummy burglar and the world was pretty crummy too, if such things could happen over a color TV. But I'd already agreed to a different proposition altogether. No lies.

“It could have been a burglary,” I said carefully. “The police are checking on that too. But,” I added, “they'd like to talk to your father.”

“No!” Her voice was a moan, but the very depth of its protest told me the thought was not a new one. She had been hiding in her bed from that ugly possibility, drowning her fear in her music. For a moment, I wanted to lie—or at least give her back her earphones—but I knew the reality would have to be faced sometime. Brad was a prime suspect, possibly a guilty one. She might have a lot more harsh reality to face in the near future.

“There
is
a case against him,” I pointed out in a deliberately professional tone, as though this were a billable hour. “He said some wild things that day in court.” I looked into Dawn's solemn face and put the case for the prosecution as baldly as I could. “Let's face it,” I began. “He didn't like your mother's relationship with Congressman Lucenti. He hated your mother taking you to Washington. Those are pretty good motives.” Not to mention Brad's history of violence toward his wife. I was sure Dawn, who'd been eight when Linda had sought sanctuary at the Safe Haven shelter, hadn't forgotten.

Dawn gave the tennis ball a final death-dealing squeeze and flung it with all her might. “I hate Congressman Lucenti!” she cried passionately. “It's all his fault!”

There was a tinkling crash as the tennis ball hit the mirror above the white-painted dresser, sharding it into a million glittering, sharp-edged pieces. On top of the dresser, a yellow china dog sat, decapitated by the falling glass.

“Oh, God, I'm sorry, I'm sorry,” Dawn moaned, jumping out of bed.

“Get back in bed!” My voice was sharpened by shock. “Your bare feet!”

“I'll get a broom and clean it up,” Dawn promised, her voice tight. Her lips were working again; the look she gave me was the same mute apology she'd given her mother when she'd had trouble with her zipper in court.

“Get back in that bed,” I ordered. Dawn did, but her eyes still darted as though she expected an angry Linda to come through the door and scold her. “I'm sorry,” she said again.

“It's okay,” I told her, trying to smile. My stomach was knotted in a sympathetic response it took me a moment to recognize. When I did, I had Dawn's secret. The deepest fear a child can know: It's all my fault.

“Oh, God,” I said, my eyes welling with tears. Of course—Dawn blamed herself for her parents' divorce, and the permanent custody battle had only reinforced the feeling of guilt. Now it seemed that her mother was dead and her father a suspect because of her.

I forced a laugh. “No harm done,” I said lightly. “What's seven years' bad luck?” Dawn gave me a wan smile for my effort, but then we sat in silence, trying not to think about it. Finally, Dawn broke the stillness.