Never Enough (15 page)

WHEN NANCY CAME INTO THE KITCHEN MONDAY MORNING
to supervise Connie’s serving of breakfast to the children, Connie noticed a bandage between the thumb and forefinger of her right hand.

“It’s nothing,” Nancy said. “I burned it on the toaster.”

One of the children asked where Daddy was.

“He’s at work. He had to leave early today.”

Connie looked at the counter next to the breakfast table where Min had left Rob’s Cartier watch the night before. Connie could never remember him having gone to work without it.

Nancy called Min into the kitchen. “You won’t need to clean the bedroom this morning,” she said. “I don’t want you to go in there today. Do you understand?” Min said she did.

Connie took Isabel and Zoe down to wait for the school bus at seven thirty. Then she walked Ethan to his preschool, the Parkview International Pre-School, called PIPS. Nancy went back to the bedroom and closed the door. She called Michael Del Priore in New Hampshire, where it was just after 7:30 on Sunday night. They spoke for twenty-four minutes.

She hung up. Then she wrote an e-mail to Scotty the Clown. She had booked Scotty and his partner Lulu for a show at the Hong Kong International School. She was supposed to meet Scotty for lunch on Tuesday, but she canceled. She wrote: “My husband is not well and I need to take care of some things. Sorry. I will be in touch soon.”

When Connie returned to the apartment after having taken Ethan to PIPS, Nancy told her to run down to the Parkview PARKnSHOP Superstore.

“I need some bleach powder,” Nancy said.

As soon as Connie left, Nancy went back to the bedroom and closed the door. She called Links Relocations on Des Voeux Road in Central, a leading mover of expats and their goods between Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, and anywhere else in the world. She said she wanted twenty packing cartons delivered that afternoon. No, she didn’t yet want to discuss details of any impending move, for now she just wanted the cartons.

She also called the Parkview property manager. “We have a storeroom in the basement of tower fifteen,” she said, “but I’d like to rent another one right away.” He told her that none were available. She expressed considerable annoyance and hung up.

Then she went out to shop.

The weather had changed dramatically overnight. High pressure had wiped the sky clear of haze, the sun was shining brilliantly, and the relative humidity had dropped to a year’s low of 30 percent. With the temperature climbing toward the mid-eighties, the weather was as close to perfect as Hong Kong weather got.

Nancy drove to the twenty-thousand-square-foot Tequila Kola Designer Warehouse in the thirty-story Horizon Plaza shopping mega-mall on Ap Lei Chau Island in Aberdeen. Tequila Kola, promising “Seduction of the Senses,” was a home furnishings store that catered almost entirely to expats who didn’t have to count the zeroes before the decimal point. Nancy knew it well. She breezed in at about 10:00 a.m. on Monday, talking loud and fast and keeping her sunglasses on. “I love that Spanish chandelier,” she called out to the first salesperson she saw, Suzara Serquina. “It’s
awesome!
” Then she beckoned. “Get over here. There’s a lot I need and I don’t have much time.”

Over the next hour she bought sheets, pillows, pillowcases, cushions, a bedspread, a small rug, and a chaise longue. She insisted on Tuesday-morning delivery. She said she’d be back Tuesday afternoon to look at carpets. Ms. Serquina noted that she signed the charge slips without even looking at the total.

When she got back to the apartment she told Min to stop housecleaning because there was more shopping to be done. She gave her a list:

rope

packing tape

polyethylene sheeting (large sheets)

When Min left, Nancy went into the bedroom and closed the door. Between 11:30 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. she emerged only long enough to get the bleach powder that Connie had bought and the various items purchased by Min and bring them back to the bedroom.

Connie picked Ethan up at PIPS, brought him home, fed him lunch, put him down for his nap, got him up again, and took him to his 3:00 p.m. swimming lesson. Isabel and Zoe were occupied by after-school activities and did not return home until almost 5:00 p.m.

As Connie microwaved dinner, she asked Isabel if she knew whether her father would be home to join them.

“No,” Isabel said. “Mommy said he went to New York.”

Rob’s Cartier wristwatch still lay on the kitchen counter. Connie looked at it and exchanged a glance with Min.

Nancy emerged from the bedroom only briefly. “Just feed the children,” she said. “I don’t feel like eating dinner.” Then she returned to the bedroom and closed the door.

Shortly before 7:00 p.m. she went online to look at the missing persons Web site maintained by the Hong Kong Police Force. Then she called her father in Chicago to tell him about the terrible fight she’d had with Rob and about how Rob had left and had not yet come back. As soon as she’d finished talking to her father, she called Bryna O’Shea. It was 8:30 p.m. in Hong Kong, 5:30 a.m. in San Francisco. The ringing half-awakened Bryna, but she did not answer the phone.

When she did wake up at 8:00 a.m. she listened to the message Nancy had left.

“You’ve got to call me. It’s very important. I just called my dad and he’s flying down here. Rob and I had a fight; he chased me around the room. He wanted to have sex. He beat me up. Call me. Please.”

Bryna called immediately.

“Rob beat the shit out of me last night,” Nancy said. “He was chasing me around the bedroom, demanding sex. It was terrible. He was drunk. I tried to fight him off, but he kept punching me and kicking me. He wouldn’t stop beating me. I’ve got two broken ribs. I’m going to the doctor. I’m going to get this documented.”

“Nan, wait a minute. Where is Rob now?”

“I don’t know. He just ran out of the apartment. He probably flew to New York.”

To Bryna, that did not sound entirely plausible. She had shared too much of Rob’s recent sorrow, she was too aware of the resignation—not anger—she’d been hearing in his voice. And she knew that Rob had been planning to tell Nancy that he was going to file for divorce. The scene, as Nancy described it, would not come into focus.

“This was in your bedroom? Were you dressed?”

“Yes, yes. Well, he was getting undressed and then he started trying to tear my clothes off. He was trying to force me onto the bed.”

“And you were screaming, fighting him off?”

“Yes. I guess so. I don’t know. I didn’t want the kids to hear.”

“So…how did you make him stop?”

“I don’t know. I guess he realized how much he’d hurt me. All of a sudden he was running out of the bedroom and down the hall. Then he was gone. God, my ribs hurt. Listen, I can’t talk anymore right now. I just wanted you to know first.”

Bryna hung up feeling that things at Parkview had gone badly amiss, but not necessarily in the way Nancy had just described. “She wasn’t believable,” Bryna would say later. “The whole story of the fight in the bedroom: it didn’t sound right. It sounded made up.”

Nancy emerged briefly to say good night to the children as Connie put them to bed. Then she told Connie and Min to go to their room and to stay there. Then she went back into the bedroom and closed the door.

THE FIRST THING NANCY DID TUESDAY MORNING WAS TO
send Min to the PARKnSAVE to buy peppermint oil. “It should be in their herbal section, or maybe pharmacy. It comes in small bottles. Get at least six. No, get twelve. If they don’t sell it, find someplace that does,” she said.

Next, Nancy called Dr. Dytham to say she needed an immediate appointment because her husband had beaten her up and had hurt her. Dr. Dytham told Nancy to come in right away.

The morning was even cooler than Monday had been. The humidity was slowly building, there were still just a few clouds in the sky. Nancy drove her Mercedes to Dr. Dytham’s office, which was located next to the Immigration Tower on Gloucester Road in the tony Wan Chai district. She arrived just before 9:00 a.m.

She made a strong first impression. For one thing, she was dressed plainly, in a white top and dark slacks. It was the first time Dytham had seen Nancy when she had not been dressed to impress. Even her sunglasses were less flashy than usual. Second, she seemed barely able to walk. She was hunched over almost double and crept slowly across the waiting room as if each step caused her great pain. As soon as she entered the examining room she sat down and started to cry.

Between sobs, she managed to say that her husband had tried to force her to have sex on Sunday night and that he’d grabbed her and punched her and kicked her when she’d refused. She said she was in pain all over her body and that she was sure her ribs were broken. Dytham noted “slow to move, total body pain.”

Then the doctor began an examination, searching for the sources of the pain. She observed a puncture wound between the thumb and forefinger of Nancy’s right hand. This was the injury that Nancy had told Connie was a burn from the toaster. She told Dr. Dytham that she had tried to defend herself against her husband with a fork that she’d held upside down and that the tines of the fork must have punctured her hand as Rob was hitting her.

No matter where the doctor touched, Nancy flinched and gasped in pain. Dytham found this puzzling, because there were very few visible bruises. Nancy’s right hand was swollen, her lips were dry and cracked, there were rug burns on both knees and a bruise about six inches long and three inches wide on her right shin. There were also lighter bruises that appeared to be finger marks on her upper right arm. Nancy said her collarbone, sternum, ribs, and spine were hurting badly. She said she couldn’t bend over and could barely move her upper right leg. She was sure her ribs were broken, she said again.

The examination was interrupted briefly when Nancy received a phone call from Michael del Priore. “I’m with Annabelle at the moment,” she said. “I’ll call you back.” After clicking off, she said, “That was a good friend from the U.S. He’s been giving me a lot of support.”

When the X-rays came back negative, Dytham began to think that Nancy was exaggerating her injuries in an attempt to bolster any assault and battery claim she might later file against her husband. The only thing about which Dytham could be certain was that there was a significant discrepancy between the severity of the “total body pain” that Nancy complained of and the presence of any visible injuries that could have caused it.

On her way home from the doctor, Nancy stopped at Tequila Kola again to buy two more carpets. Nancy said she’d take them with her. She didn’t care what they cost. A Tequila Kola employee managed to fit them in the Mercedes. When she got to Parkview, Nancy took them out and carried them, one at a time, to the lobby elevator and up to the apartment herself.

“Min! Where’s the peppermint oil?”

Min pointed to six one-ounce bottles on the kitchen counter.

“I want you to go down to the storage room and make more space. There are some things I’ll be sending down there soon and right now there’s not enough room.”

That afternoon Connie noticed the smell of incense coming from behind the closed bedroom door. That struck her as peculiar; she’d never known Nancy to burn incense in the bedroom before. She also noticed a white spot on the carpet just outside the bedroom door. It looked as if Nancy had used the new bleach powder to clean up a stain. That, too, seemed odd. Nancy was definitely
not
the sort of person who cleaned up her own stains.

Isabel and Zoe stayed at HKIS for after-class activities again. As soon as Ethan awoke from his nap at 3:00 p.m., Nancy told Connie to take him to the Aberdeen Marina Club and to keep him there until dinnertime at 7:00 p.m. She said she needed some time alone.

When Connie returned with Ethan, she noticed that several of the newly arrived packing cartons that had been stacked in the dining room were no longer there. She also was surprised to see a brand-new rug in the living room.

Nancy emerged from the bedroom at dinnertime only to say, as she had the night before, that she would not be eating with the children. “I’m going to take a shower,” she said. An hour later, in fresh clothes, she came into the kitchen and made herself some bacon and eggs. But she barely picked at the food.

“Connie, I have to talk to you,” she said. “Get the girls into their rooms. Tell them they can read in bed. Ethan can stay in the playroom. He’ll keep himself busy. We can go into his room to talk.”

Nancy sat on Ethan’s bed. Connie stood at its foot.

“Rob and I had a terrible fight on Sunday night,” Nancy said. “That’s why I’ve been upset. He grabbed me and he hit me. He just kept on hitting me. He knocked me down and then he started kicking me. He really hurt me. Connie, look, he broke my ribs.”

She lifted her top and pointed to the right side of her rib cage. “Can you believe that?
He broke my ribs!
”

Connie looked but saw no sign of any injury.

Nancy pulled up the right leg of her slacks. “And look: here’s where he kicked me.”

Connie saw a bruise on the shin.

“And you’ve already seen this,” Nancy said and held out her right hand, bandaged between forefinger and thumb. She’d told Connie she’d burnt it on the toaster. She’d told Dr. Dytham she’d suffered puncture wounds from holding a fork the wrong way.

“It’s worse than I thought. My wrist may be broken. He was really drunk. Totally out of control. You and Min were in your room so you wouldn’t have heard anything. And the children, thank goodness, stayed asleep. Besides, I was too scared to scream. I was afraid he’d kill me if I screamed.”

“Mrs. Kissel, how long has this been going on?”

“About a year. It’s been getting worse. He’s just—the stress of his work—he became a different person. His whole life—it got to be all about power and money.”

Connie was shocked. Never in the six years she’d worked for Rob and Nancy had she seen any sign that he’d abused her. She’d seen him irritated, snappish, annoyed on occasion, but in general he was pleasant, thoughtful, caring, and calm, and always full of love for his children. He’d seemed a man in complete control of himself and his impulses. Nancy, not Rob, was the one with the temper.

And Rob in a drunken rage? The only time Connie could recall having seen Rob even a bit tipsy—it had been at the end of August, as he’d celebrated his return from the surgery in New York—he’d been giggly, not angry, and the evening had wound up with everyone laughing themselves silly.

“Have you been to a doctor?” Connie asked.

“Yes, I got a checkup this morning. They took X-rays—my ribs and my wrist—but we don’t have results yet.”

“Where is Mr. Kissel now?”

“I don’t know. But I don’t think he’s ever coming back.”

Bryna had been expecting to hear from Rob. He’d said he’d call or e-mail to tell her how Nancy had handled the news that he’d be divorcing her. Instead, Nancy had called to describe the terrible fight. Bryna called him on his cell phone several times on Monday morning and left messages. He didn’t call back. Just before noon, she sent an e-mail: “Now I’m getting worried…” She did not receive a reply. She kept calling until late Monday night. Early Tuesday morning she sent another e-mail: “I couldn’t sleep…will you please call?”

On Tuesday afternoon (the middle of the night in Hong Kong) Bryna remembered something else. She e-mailed Nancy: “Do you want me to cancel your surgery date?”

She kept calling Rob’s cell phone. He had apparently turned it off. That night (Wednesday morning in Hong Kong), she called Nancy again. The more she’d thought about what Nancy had told her about the fight, the more skeptical she grew. For one thing, the night you tell your wife you’ve decided to file for divorce would not likely be a night when you’d chase her around the bedroom demanding sex. For another, Nancy’s distress had sounded forced. And she hadn’t cried. Bryna had seen Nancy cry when a store clerk told her a particular item was out of stock. But as she’d described the beating she’d suffered at Rob’s hands there had been no hint of tears in her voice.

This time, she sounded aggravated when she picked up the phone. “That fucking Rob. I’m sitting here trying to deal with our bills, but he’s got all our money tied up at Merrill Lynch. I can’t even write a check to pay the school tuition.”

“Have you heard from him?” Bryna asked. “Do you know where he is?”

“He probably flew to New York.”

“Why would he have flown to New York?”

“I don’t know. Where else would he go?”

“Nan, think back to Sunday night. When he left, did he take his wallet?”

“No, he just ran out.”

“Did he take his keys?”

“What difference does that make? No. No, they’re still here.”

“How about his shoes, Nan? Did he put on his shoes before he left?”

“I already told you: he just ran out.”

“Without his shoes.”

“Yeah, without his shoes.”

“So he was beating you and trying to throw you onto the bed to force you to have sex and then he just stopped and ran out of the apartment without his wallet, his keys, or his shoes? Come on, Nan. That doesn’t make sense. He couldn’t have gone to New York.”

“Well, maybe he didn’t. He’s a grown-up. He can take care of himself. And I’m fine, Bryna. You don’t need to worry about me.”

“But I guess I’d better cancel your boob job.”

“No, don’t do that. I’ll be there.”

As soon as Nancy hung up, Bryna started calling Hong Kong’s five-star hotels, asking if a Robert Kissel was registered. He wasn’t at the Mandarin Oriental. He wasn’t at the Ritz-Carlton. He wasn’t at the Grand Hyatt. He wasn’t at the Langham. He wasn’t at either the Peninsula or the Shangri-La in Kowloon. He wasn’t at the InterContinental. He wasn’t at the Excelsior in Causeway Bay.

She called Merrill Lynch, was told Mr. Kissel was not available, and eventually was put through to David Noh.

“Please bear with me for a minute,” Bryna said. “This is going to sound weird, but I’m a very close friend of Rob and Nancy’s from San Francisco.”

“Bryna O’Shea,” Noh said. “Rob talks about you a lot.”

“Well, I’ve been trying to reach him, but I can’t. He hasn’t returned calls or answered e-mails since Sunday. I’ve talked to Nancy a couple of times and she says she doesn’t know where he is. I thought he might be staying in a hotel, so I’ve been calling around, but—”

“So have I,” Noh said.

“Excuse me?”

“Let’s save ourselves some time, Bryna. Rob has told me how he’s been confiding in you.”

“And he’s told me he’s been confiding in
you.
”

“So we can be frank. I’m worried. In fact, we’ve just had a meeting here about Rob. You and I both know that he was going to tell Nancy on Sunday night that he’d decided to file for divorce.”

“And he was worried about how she’d react. But now she’s saying he attacked her Sunday night and beat the shit out of her and ran out of the apartment. She says she thinks he went to New York.”

“Is that what she’s telling you? Well, he didn’t go to New York. His passport is still in his desk drawer. Bryna, I talked to him at five-thirty Sunday afternoon and he sounded completely out of it. Like he was drugged or something—not like a man about to tell his wife the marriage was over. Then he missed a conference call on Sunday night—a really,
really
important call. Everybody was stunned that he’d blown it. Then he didn’t show up for work on Monday. I called Nancy and she told me he was busy ‘resolving family issues.’ That’s what she said, ‘resolving family issues.’ I had no idea what she meant.”