As I got within a few feet of her, she looked up at me but made no move to meet me. I saw now that an FBI man was standing near the pillar, watching her, guarding her actually. She glanced up at him, and he nodded, and she stood and came toward me. Odd, I thought, how even the highborn learn so quickly how to become prisoners. Depressing, actually.
We stood a few feet apart, and I saw that she had been crying, but she looked all right now. Composed, as I said. I suppose our audience was waiting for us to embrace or for someone to break down or maybe go for the other’s throat. I was aware that six or seven men were ready to spring into action in the event of the latter. These guys were tense, of course, having already lost one person they were supposed to be safeguarding.
Finally I said to my wife, “Are you all right?”
She nodded.
“Where did you get the gun?”
“He gave it to me.”
“When? Why?”
She seemed a little out of it, which was normal under the circumstances, but she thought a moment and replied, “When he came home from the hospital. The FBI men were searching the house, and he had a gun hidden so he gave it to me to keep for him.”
“I see.’’ You blew it, Frank. But really, if it weren’t a gun, it would have been a knife or a fireplace poker, or anything she could get her hands on. Hell hath no fury like a redheaded woman scorned. Believe it. I asked her, “Did you make any statement to anyone here?”
“Statement . . . ? No . . . I just said . . . I forgot . . .”
“Don’t say anything to them or to the police when they arrive.”
“The police . . . ?”
“Yes, they’re on the way.”
“Can’t I go home?”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Am I going to jail?”
“Yes. I’ll try to get you out tomorrow on bail.’’ Then again, maybe I won’t.
She nodded and smiled for the first time, a forced smile, but genuine nonetheless. She said, “You’re a good lawyer.”
“Right.’’ I saw that she was pale and shaky, so I led her back to the chair. She glanced over at the mess at the far end of the palm court, then looked at me and said, “I killed him.”
“Yes, I know.’’ I sat her down in the chair, knelt, and took her hand. “Do you want something to drink?”
“No, thank you.’’ She added, “I did this for you.”
I chose to ignore that.
The county police arrived, uniformed officers, plainclothes detectives, the forensic unit, ambulance attendants, police photographers, and other assorted crime-scene types. The grandeur of Alhambra seemed more interesting to them than its dead owner, but eventually they got down to business.
Susan watched the activity as though it had nothing to do with her. Neither of us spoke, but I stayed with her, kneeling beside her chair and holding her hand.
I saw Mancuso speaking to a big beefy guy with a ruddy face, and they kept glancing over at Susan and me as they spoke. Finally, the big guy walked over to us and I stood. A uniformed female police officer joined him. The big guy said to me, “You’re her husband?”
“And her attorney. Who are you?”
He obviously didn’t like my tone or my question, but you have to get off on the wrong foot with these guys, because that’s where you’re headed anyway. He said, “I’m Lieutenant Dolan, County Homicide.’’ He turned to Susan and said, “And you are Susan Sutter?”
She nodded.
“Okay, Mrs. Sutter, I’m going to read you your rights in the presence of your husband, who I understand is your attorney.’’ Dolan had one of those little cheat cards like Mancuso had and began reading from it. Good Lord, you’d think they could remember a few simple lines after twenty years of saying them. I mean, I can still recite the entire prologue of the
Canterbury Tales
twenty-five years after I learned it, and that’s in Middle English.
Dolan asked Susan, “Do you understand your rights?”
Again she nodded.
He looked at me. “She understands?”
“Not really,’’ I replied, “but for the record, yes.”
He turned back to Susan. “Do you want to make any statements at this time?”
“I—”
I interrupted. “No. She is obviously not going to make any statements, Lieutenant.”
“Right.’’ Dolan signaled to the uniformed policewoman, who approached, somewhat self-consciously I thought. Dolan turned back to Susan. “Please stand, Mrs. Sutter.”
Susan stood.
Dolan said to her, “You are under arrest for murder. Please turn around.”
The policewoman actually turned Susan by the shoulder and was going to cuff her hands behind her back, but I grabbed the woman’s wrist. “No. In the front.’’ I looked at Dolan. “She won’t try to strangle you with the cuffs, Lieutenant.”
This didn’t go over very well, but after a little glaring all around, Dolan said to the policewoman, “In front.”
Before Susan was cuffed, I helped her off with her tweed jacket, and then the woman cuffed Susan’s hands in front of her. This is more comfortable, less humiliating, and looks better because you can throw a coat over the cuffs, which I then did with Susan’s jacket.
By this time, Dolan and I were getting to understand each other a little better, and we didn’t like what we understood. Dolan said to the policewoman but also so I could hear, “Mrs. Sutter was searched by the federal types when they grabbed her, and they tell me she has no more weapons, but you have her searched again at the station house, and you look for poison and other means of suicide, and you keep a suicide watch on her all night. I don’t want to lose this one.’’ He glanced at me, then said to the policewoman, “Okay, take her away.”
“Hold on,’’ I said. “I want to speak to my client.”
But Lieutenant Dolan was not going to be as cooperative as Mr. Mancuso had been under similar circumstances in this very spot some months before. Lieutenant Dolan said, “If you want to talk to her, come to the station house.”
“I intend to speak to her now, Lieutenant.’’ I had my hand on Susan’s left arm, and the policewoman had her hand on Susan’s right arm. Poor Susan. For the first time since I’d known her, she actually looked as if she wasn’t in control of a situation.
Well, before the situation got out of everyone’s control, Mancuso ambled over and put his arm around Dolan, leading him away. They chatted a minute, then Dolan turned back toward us and motioned to the policewoman to back off.
I took Susan’s cuffed hands in mine, and we looked at each other. She didn’t say anything but squeezed my hands. Finally, I said, “Susan . . . do you understand what’s happening?”
She nodded. Actually she did seem more alert now, and she looked me in the eye. “John, I’m so sorry for the inconvenience. I should have waited until you left.”
That would have been a good idea, but Susan had no intention of letting me off that easy. I said, “Maybe you shouldn’t have killed him at all.”
Her mind was either elsewhere or she didn’t want to hear that, because she said, “Could you do me a favor? Zanzibar is tethered out back. Will you ride him home? He can’t stay there all night.”
I replied, “I’ll certainly take care of Zanzibar.”
“Thank you. And could you see to Zanzibar and Yankee in the morning?”
“All right.”
“Will I be home by afternoon?”
“Perhaps. If I can make bail.”
“Well, my checkbook is in my desk.”
I replied, “I don’t think they take personal checks, Susan. But I’ll work something out.”
“Thank you, John.”
There really wasn’t much else to say, I suppose, now that the horses were taken care of and I knew where her checkbook was. Well, maybe this wasn’t the time for sarcasm, but if I told you I wasn’t enjoying this at all, I’d be a liar. Still, I couldn’t really enjoy it, nor for that matter could I weep over it unless I fully understood it. So, against my better judgment, I asked her, “Why did you kill him?”
She looked at me as though that were a silly question. “He destroyed us. You know that.”
Okay. So leave it at that. From that we had a chance to rebuild our lives together if we chose to. She did it for us. End of story. But you can’t build on lies, so I said, “Susan, don’t lie to me. Did he tell you he was leaving you? Did he tell you that he was not leaving Anna for you? That he was not taking you with him to Italy? Did he tell you that he only used you to get to me?”
She stared at me, through me actually, and I saw she was off again in Susan land. I suppose we could have this conversation some other time, though I was curious to discover if Bellarosa’s telling Susan that he only used her to get to me was the proximate cause of his death. And you may wonder if I knew or suspected what would happen when I set that in motion. That is a complex question. I’d have to think about that.
I looked at Susan. “If you did it for us, Susan, then thank you for trying to save our marriage and our life together. But you didn’t have to
kill
him.”
“Yes, I
did.
He was evil, John. He seduced us both. Don’t take his side. He was always taking
your
side about something or other and now you’re taking his side. Now I’m angry with you both. Men are all alike, aren’t they, always sticking up for one another, but he
was
different from other men, and I was obsessed with him, but I tried to control myself, I really did, but I couldn’t keep away from him, even after you asked me to, and he took advantage of me, and he used me, and he promised me he was going to save Stanhope Hall, but he didn’t, and he used you, too, John, and you knew what was happening, so don’t look at me like that.”
Susan went on like this for a while, and I realized I could enter an insanity plea, but by morning she’d be herself again, which is not to say any less crazy, but at least she’d be quieter about it.
I took her head in my hands and played with her soft red hair. She stopped babbling and looked at me. Those catlike green eyes stared right into me, and with crystal-clear sanity now, she said to me, “I did this because you couldn’t, John. I did this to return your honor to you.
You
should have done it. You were right not to let him die, but you should have killed him.”
Well, if we had been living in another age or another country, she would be right. But not in this age, not in this country. Though perhaps like Frank Bellarosa, and like Susan, I
should
have acted on my more primitive instincts, on fifty thousand years of past human experience. Instead, I rationalized, philosophized, and intellectualized when I should have listened to my emotions, which had always said to me, “He is a threat to your survival. Kill him.”
I looked at Susan and she said, “Kiss me,’’ and pursed those magnificent pouty lips.
I kissed her.
She pressed her head into my chest and cried for a minute, then stepped back. “Well,’’ she said in a crisp, cool voice, “off to jail. I want to be out tomorrow, Counselor.”
I smiled.
“Tell me you love me,’’ she demanded.
“I love you.”
“And I’ve always loved you, John. Forever.”
“I know.”
The policewoman approached and took Susan’s arm gently, then led her toward the front door.
I watched until she was gone, but she never looked back at me. I was aware of a lot of quiet people around the palm court and thought it best if I left quickly so they could get back to their business.
I turned toward the rear of the house to go fetch Zanzibar as I had promised. As I walked across the court, I could hear my footsteps echoing on the tile floor, and I saw out of the corner of my eye Bellarosa’s body still lying off to my left, uncovered. Frank Bellarosa was surrounded by people who found him interesting: the police photographer, two laboratory women, and the coroner.
As I walked past the body, I passed something off to my right. I stopped and turned back to look at it. It was a large brass display easel that held an oil painting framed in a soft green and white lacquered frame, quite a nice frame actually. The painting was of Alhambra’s ruined palm court, of course, and I studied it. It was really quite good, perhaps one of the best that I’ve seen of Susan’s works. But what do I know about art?
I stared at the painting of the ruined palm court, the streams of sunlight coming in from the broken glass dome, the decayed stucco walls, the vines twisting around the marble pillars, and the cracked floor sprouting scraggy plant life amid the rubble. And I saw this now not as a whimsical or romantic rendition of physical decay, but as a mirrored image of a ruined and crumbling mind; not a vanished world of past glory, but a vanished world of mental and spiritual health. But what do I know about psychology? I hauled off and put my fist through the canvas, sending it and the easel sprawling across the court.
No one seemed to mind.
It was January, and the days were short and cold. It was about four
P
.
M
., and already the sunlight was fading, but I didn’t need or want much light.