“If you don’t like the situation, there’s the door. And just so that we thoroughly understand each other, I’m not your protector. I’m just trying to find out who killed Jennifer and if I decide you did it, I won’t think twice about giving you the patented Judas Iscariot kiss and handing you over to the cops.”
“You’re a rat bastard. You know that?”
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“Here’s a news flash: It isn’t a beautiful day in the neighborhood and I’m not Mr. Rogers. Nice guys not only always finish last, they never solve murders.” I tore the foil package open and inserted the paper cartridge containing the coffee into the brewer. “So, if you’re done venting on me because the world is so cruel, sit down.”
I took the carafe into the bathroom and filled it with water. When I returned, Donna was seated on one of the wooden chairs next to the worktable. Her fingers were interlaced in her lap and her left foot was tapping out a quiet nervous tattoo on the floor. I poured the water into the coffeemaker and the brewer had already begun to hiss by the time I’d taken a seat in the other chair. Grabbing several pages of Maritime Inn stationery from the drawer, I wrote the date and time at the top of a sheet.
“Are you going to walk or talk?” I asked.
“I’ll answer your questions and I’m sorry for snapping at you. It’s just . . .”
It’s just that your mood changes are as volatile as
gasoline prices right before a holiday weekend
, was what I wanted to say. Instead, I said, “Forget it. People get upset and say things they don’t necessarily mean when they’re angry and frightened.”
“And I am frightened. Thank you for your understanding.”
“You’re welcome. So, how long had you known Jennifer?”
“Since middle school.” There was a long pause. “God, it’s so weird to refer to her in the past tense.”
“How old were you when you met her?”
“I was going into eighth grade. Her family moved to our town from somewhere near Wilkes-Barre.”
“You became friends?”
“Not right away, but a few months later.”
“Tell me about her. Can you remember why you considered her your best friend?”
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Donna’s eyes seemed to glaze over. For just a second there was a slight bittersweet smile, and I knew she was remembering the good times with Jennifer. At last, she said, “Everybody thought she was this dull wallflower, but she could be so wickedly funny and she was very smart. She should have gone to college . . .”
“But?”
“But she ended up marrying Tony. I could never figure that out.”
“Why?”
“You’ve seen Tony. He wasn’t fat back then, but other than that he was completely the same. A loud-mouthed, know-it-all loser.”
“And violent?”
Donna gave a snort of disgust. “They hadn’t been married much more than a month when she came running over to my house after he’d kicked her in the thigh. God, you should have seen that bruise.”
“Yet from everything I’ve been able to piece together, Jennifer loved him. Any ideas why?”
“None that made any sense to me. Once, she told me that it was always very nice after one of Tony’s
‘episodes’—that’s what she called the beatings, by the way—because he was very attentive and sweet.”
“And he bought her gifts and took her on special vaca-tions.”
“How did you know that?”
“It’s a normal cycle of domestic abuse.”
“That’s sick.”
“And far more common than you can guess.” The coffee brewer began to sputter and gurgle. I went over and poured myself a cup. “You sure you don’t want any?”
“No, thank you.”
Returning to the table, I said, “I realize you two had been on the outs for some time, but is it possible she could have been having a relationship with another man?”
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“An affair? I don’t think so.”
“Why not? There’s some evidence that another man is in love with her.”
“Then he’s just another victim of one of her con games. We didn’t talk about it a lot, but Jen wasn’t a big fan of sex. It was too sweaty and personal for her. In fact, one of the things she appreciated about Tony was his pa-triotism.”
“Huh?”
“He was a Minute Man.” Donna’s face twisted into a wry grin.
I gave a humorless chuckle. “You mentioned her having a ‘wicked’ sense of humor. I guess that’s an example?”
“She could be cruel.”
Ordinarily, I’d have spent a great deal more time elic-iting background information about Jennifer, but I decided to move forward more quickly and aggressively with my questioning. There were a couple of reasons for this. I realized the clock was ticking and that it wouldn’t be long before the cops began looking for Donna. Also, I knew it was only a matter of time before her mood switched back to Joan Crawford–mode and there was no assurance that she’d continue the interview after that happened. I gently asked, “Cruel enough to make someone want to kill her?”
“Yes.”
“You, for instance?”
She blinked at me in confusion as if she hadn’t quite heard me correctly. “No. I told you that once already.”
“Call me a nasty old cynic, but people have been known to lie when they’re looking at life in prison.”
“I’m not lying. I didn’t kill her.”
“But you hated her.”
“That’s not the same thing as wanting her dead.”
“Say for the sake of argument that’s true. If you didn’t want her dead, what did you want?”
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Donna seemed to be holding her breath. At last she said quietly, “An acknowledgement from her that she’d betrayed me.”
“But you knew that wasn’t going to happen, didn’t you?”
“Yes.” She looked down at the tabletop.
“Do you know how Donna was killed?”
“The only thing I heard was that she couldn’t breathe.”
“She was poisoned. Somebody removed the medication from her asthma inhaler and replaced it with superglue.”
“Oh my God.” Donna looked up and her eyes shone with a sick horror. “A big enough dose of cyanoacrylate fumes would shut her lungs down almost immediately.”
“Uh-huh. Not many people are aware of that, much less the chemical name for superglue. But it’s exactly the sort of information I’d expect a high school chemistry teacher to know.” I put the pen down and sat back in my chair.
“How did you find out that I teach chemistry?”
I nodded in the direction of my laptop on the table. “I Googled you. Your name came up on the high school Web site.”
“And so you immediately decided that I killed her?”
“Put yourself in my place. What would you think?”
She locked eyes with me. “I didn’t sabotage the inhaler or kill Jennifer.”
The interrogation of a homicide suspect involves as much tactical listening as it does asking questions. A skilled interviewer pays close attention to phrasing, use of tenses, metaphors, body language, and five or six other indicators to determine if the suspect is providing an honest answer or false information. Crooks almost always try to qualify their answers because, deep down inside, they recognize they aren’t smart enough to remember their lies and they want some wiggle room when they’re eventually forced to explain disparities in their stories. Think of a former president quibbling over the precise meaning 124
John J. Lamb
of the word “is” and you have an idea of the sort of word games that criminals can play. Yet, Donna had answered directly and hadn’t sworn to it on her mother’s grave, which is a guaranteed signal that a suspect is being frugal with the truth. I was forced to conclude that she’d answered honestly.
“I believe you, but you’ve still got a major problem.”
“Being in her room last night.”
“
Breaking
into her room,” I corrected, “after falsely identifying yourself as Jennifer to the hotel clerk and then later making statements to a hundred or so witnesses that could be construed as threats. You’re Tony’s get-out-of-jail-free card.”
“Do you think he actually killed her?”
“Unlikely.” I took a sip of coffee. “Like I said earlier, he’s a thug. Blunt force trauma is his style. He’s not smart enough to use poison.”
“And I am,” Donna said bleakly.
“Yep.”
“Well, what about Todd Litten? Couldn’t he be a suspect?”
“I’ll admit he probably has the brains to have done it, but what was his motive?”
“I don’t know.” She sounded frustrated.
“Neither do I and your problem is that the police have already crowned him as their star witness.”
Donna’s gaze dropped to the tabletop. “Now what do I do?”
“Tell me why you went into her room.”
Twelve
Donna put her elbow on the wooden arm of the chair and rested her chin in her palm. She studied me in silence for a few moments and then finally said, “Tell me something.
Did
you
really design and make that bear? The one that was nominated for the award?”
“Of course,” I answered a little stiffly.
“Your wife didn’t help?”
“Not unless you count the couple of hundred hours she spent teaching me how to avoid sewing my fingers together as helping.”
“I wouldn’t blame you if she helped. She’s good.”
“It’s my work.”
“The clothes, too?”
“I got the shoes from a doll supply shop. Other than that, it’s all my own work, including the gun and sunglasses.”
“That’s hard to believe.”
“So is the idea that sane people actually paid seven-fifty to see
Gigli
. We live in a strange universe.”
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John J. Lamb
For the moment, we’d switched roles and she was the interrogator. Back when I was a young and inexperienced detective, I’d have bristled at this change in circumstances and sought to immediately reassert myself as being in control. But now that I was older and a little wiser, I understood that we were at that pivotal point in an interview when fundamental trust was being established.
Donna’s decision as to whether she was going tell me the rest of her story hinged on how I answered her questions.
“How long have you been making teddy bears?” she asked.
“Just since last October.”
“Why did you begin making them?”
“Two reasons, I guess. The most important one is that I get to spend time with Ashleigh. My job kept us apart way too much.”
“And the other reason?”
“I like them and having them around makes me a better man. Twenty-five years of cop work in a city like San Francisco tends to give you a pessimistic view of the human race. Yet, artisan teddy bears are proof that people aren’t all bad.” I paused to take a sip of coffee, slightly taken aback by a sudden realization. “Which, I suppose, is the real motive for why I’m investigating Jennifer’s murder.”
“I don’t understand.”
“A murder at a teddy bear show is as bad as a murder in a church. Worse, as far as I’m concerned. Most of the wars in history were caused by religions, but no one’s ever started a crusade, massacred a town of heretics, or declared a jihad over a teddy bear.”
Donna slowly sagged back into the chair. “Are you a parent?”
“We have two children. My daughter is a police officer. My son is a vintner.”
“I had a son . . . Benjamin. He was the sweetest little The False-Hearted Teddy
127
boy. We used to play a kissing game every night before he went to bed.”
“What happened to him?”
“Eleven days after his third birthday he was diagnosed with severe muscular dystrophy.”
“I can’t even begin to imagine how terrible that must have been.”
“No, you can’t, but thank you for not saying you’re
‘sorry.’ It’s a word people use when you’ve made them uncomfortable and they want you to change the subject.”
“Were you still married when this happened?”
“Could I have something to drink?”
“There’s some coffee left. Or would you like some water?”
“You don’t have anything else? I’m not picky.” Donna tried to sound blasé, but there was an undercurrent of shame in her voice.
I realized that she wanted something alcoholic and, as a matter of fact, there was an unopened 750-milliliter bottle of Frangelico in my suitcase. Ash and I don’t drink much, but we occasionally enjoy small glasses of the sweet hazelnut liqueur as a nightcap. I’d brought the bottle along because the only thing more obscenely over-priced than a hotel bar drink is a CEO’s golden parachute retirement package. Back when I was a homicide inspector, I wouldn’t have even considered giving her an alcoholic beverage, since any statement given afterwards would probably be suppressed in an evidentiary hearing. Judges tend to frown on the practice of liquoring up witnesses, much less potential murder suspects, before an interview.
However, this wasn’t an official police investigation and it was clear that I was going to have to prime the pump before Donna continued her tale.
“I may have something here.” I limped over to the closet, opened the suitcase, and held up the monk-shaped brown bottle. “Will this do?”
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John J. Lamb
“Yes, thank you.”
“You want it in some coffee or straight?”
“Straight, please. You must think I’m pretty pathetic.”
“People do the best they can do.” I grabbed a clean water glass from the bathroom and returned to the table.
Unscrewing the bottle top, I poured about three finger’s worth of the fragrant amber liquor and slid the glass across the table to her.
Liqueurs such as Frangelico are made to be sipped, but Donna knocked back half the Benedictine joy-juice in two swallows. Giving me a weak grin, she said, “Better.
You know what they say?”
“No.”
“I’d rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy, but . . .”
“You’d opt for the lobotomy, if it made you forget.”
She nodded and her eyes grew moist. Ordinarily, I have a very low tolerance for boozy self-pity, but it was pretty clear that her son had died, so she had a better reason for wallowing in it than most folks. I sat down and kept silent, waiting for her to resume speaking.
Donna wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand and then drank the rest of the liquor. “Here’s an
Oliver Twist
moment: May I have some more, sir?”