Winter of frozen dreams (17 page)

It was a calculating and appalling deed, and unless something drastic occurred in their favor, Lulling said, it might succeed.

Doyle stared at the detective through a screen of pipe smoke. Lullings opinion was passionate and radical, but the DA did not disagree.

20

Television crews from the local network affiliates wrestled for position on the second floor of the City-County Building outside the courtroom of the Honorable P. Charles Jones. It was April 7th, and the arraignment of Barbara Hoffman for Harry Berge's murder was scheduled for 9:00 a.m.

The cameras focused on the elevator doors opposite the courtroom. Tech men conducted lighting and sound checks and guzzled coffee from Styrofoam cups. Yards of black cable spooled at the base of their tripods. Klieg bulbs burned like miniature suns in the dim hallway. Reporters gossiped in amiable tones, speculated on the mystery of Davies s death and the pall of doubt it cast over the case. Courthouse observers lingered—lawyers awaiting a hearing, secretaries late for work, bailiffs, office clerks, people with other business who hoped to snatch a glimpse of the notorious Ms. Hoffman.

At 8:53 a.m. the elevator doors whisked open, and Barbara hesitated, as if temporarily paralyzed by the attention. There was a cacophony of voices. Flashbulbs popped, and blue light soaked the hallway like rain. Her brown eyes registered surprise behind the tortoiseshell glasses. Don Eisenberg shielded her with his left arm, prodded her forward, and scowled at the cameras.

Questions from news reporters were brushed aside.

The crowd tightened and the space shrank as people shoved closer for a peek at the defendant. Photographers climbed onto the hallway benches to capture Barbaras expression of bewilderment. Eisenberg castigated a cameraman who ventured too close. Someone hollered for Barbaras comments. Her attorney answered with a barrage of expletives guaranteed to be deleted from the evening's news footage. An associate grabbed the door, and they scooted out of the media assault.

After the maelstrom in the hallway the courtroom seemed like a sanctuary and a tomb. It was gloomy and quiet. Doyle, Burr, and Spencer conferred in hushed tones at the prosecution table. Anita Clark jotted on a notepad in the front row.

Judge Jones entered. He announced the case as the State of Wisconsin versus Barbara Hoffman, aka Linda Millar.

Eisenberg immediately protested. "Your Honor, there is no 'also known as/ Her name is Barbara Hoffman, and that's it/'

Before Jones finished reading the charges, the defense attorney rose and objected to the cameras and the media blitz in the hallway. He labeled it "cruel and unusual punishment for Barbara" and asked that more civilized arrangements be established for her entrance and exit from the courtroom.

Jones nodded, and the proceedings continued.

Eisenberg objected frequently. He formally requested that the case be returned to county court for another preliminary hearing, arguing that the Davies letters constituted new evidence. The letter was an ostensible admission of guilt.

Jones noted the challenge but issued no ruling. He asked for a plea from the defendant.

Again Eisenberg protested. He declared that the criminal complaint against Barbara—which accused her of bludgeoning Harry Berge about the head and neck with a blunt instrument, thus causing his death—contained numerous and reckless misinterpretations of fact. The defendant would not enter a plea, said Eisenberg. She would stand mute before the court.

The judge sighed at the bombast. He ruled that the court would enter a plea of not guilty for Ms. Hoffman. No trial date was set, because the defense indicated it would be filing motions for a new prelim, for dismissal, etc., within the thirty-day deadline, and rulings would be made accordingly. The arraignment was adjourned. Barbara Hoffman had remained silent throughout.

Judge Jones permitted her to exit through his chambers to avoid harassment and for her personal safety. As she left the courtroom, she turned and stared—it was all men: her lawyer, the prosecution lawyers, the judge, the bailiffs. She was surrounded by men, somber and earnest, dispatching justice in accordance with a system they had created and perpetuated. The only women were Anita Clark, buried in her notes in the front row, and the court stenographer, whose red nails punched the shorthand keys and who could have been earning twice her income on half as much work if she traded her polyester suit for a lace negligee.

Eisenberg held a press conference in the hallway. Rumors linking Barbara and the massage parlors were strenuously disavowed. With TV cameras registering his every word and gesture, Eisenberg passionately and eloquently predicted that the spurious allegations leveled at his client would be squashed and her good name and reputation restored. He denigrated the police work on the case. Jerry Davies, he insisted, had been bullied into making statements, and what was obviously a suicide note corroborated Davies s guilt. The court had no alternative but to dismiss the charges for lack of evidence. A suit by Ms. Hoffman, Eisenberg informed the media, was being contemplated.

— 21 —

Later that day Don Eisenberg called Phil Sprecher, the agent who had sold Jerry Davies life insurance, and asked about settlement of the three small policies totaling $20,000 with Central Life Assurance. A month ago Davies

had named Barbara Hoffman beneficiary of the policies. If the death was considered accidental, the policies paid $35,000.

Sprecher replied that the necessary forms would be mailed out immediately.

22

A blend of moonlight and the phosphorescence of the street lamp; from the darkness of the kitchen Liza peered at a patch of tulips in a neighbors backyard. Every day of April she had watched the perennials bud and blossom, but at that moment the flowers appeared surreal, a collection of scarlet china cups balanced on green crepe-paper stems. It was too late to be talking on the telephone. The spiral cord stretched across the kitchen as if a lifeline extended to a drowning soul.

The glow of orange from Lizas cigarette was the only light in the house. Into an earthenware saucer she flicked the ashes, then hoisted a mug of herbal tea to her lips.

The clock on the stove read 2:35.

"Where did I go?" Barbara asked, talking about last December. "What did I do?"

The words echoed in the plastic cavern of the telephone receiver. Liza had been through these agonizing conversations before. Barbara struggled to remember, as if she were trying to recount a brief journey that had been forgotten, as if she were trying to recount a summer vacation from her youth. Barbara recited scenes without sequence or order. Forward and backward, her mind jumped. Names and incidents were recalled like pieces blindly pulled from a hat.

The chatter made Liza uneasy. Barbara tossed around names that Liza had read in the newspapers, names that belonged to men who were dead. Liza stared out the window. She saw photos clipped from the front page of the newspaper, photos black and white and fuzzy in the

moonlight, and the photos were propped in the china cups that were really tulips. Liza saw dozens of portraits of two melancholy men, Berge and Davies. The photos could have been of the same individual at different periods in life— young man sad and old man sad, or father and son and loneliness.

Liza lit another cigarette. She interjected with pertinent advice about the benefits of sleep and relaxation. A poster on a campus kiosk had advertised a lecture on transcendental meditation. Perhaps they should attend, suggested Liza. They could both use some quiet in their lives, she added, but Barbara withheld a reply. Was Barbara contemplating the idea or being silently scornful?

Liza blew a line of smoke into the darkness and chuckled at a remembrance from the days at Jan's Health Spa.

Liza used to tease that Barbara had perfected a scornful glance and that it was her most frequent expression. A method of maintaining adequate distance, Barbara had laughed, but it was not a joke. Liza remembered how different Barbara was from everyone else in that environment. Barbaras patrons treated her regally. They brought her gifts and trinkets, issued dinner invitations, acclaimed her talents to whoever listened. On Sunday nights men waited hours for thirty-five minutes of her tongue and touch. Her popularity, however, was not universal. The women who worked with Barbara did not view her with the esteem accorded to royalty.

It would have been easy to regard Barbara s disfavor as jealousy due to the attention, or resentment because of the generous tips she earned, or insecurity, for obviously Barbara knew something about men, or was willing to do something to men, that the others didn't. Liza had discerned another dimension to the dynamic. Shy and aloof, Barbara discouraged contact from other women.

As contemptuous as Barbara had acted of the massage parlor atmosphere and its denizens, the small, strange world had affected her profoundly. The drug abuse and

the sexual disparagement had jostled her head. Perhaps resistance to the bizarre and the perverse melted, not from any sense of liberation but from an evaporation of self-respect. It was as if discordant elements in Barbara's personality, which had been submerged deep below the surface, bubbled free. Barbara had always been fascinated and intrigued by abnormal psychology, taking classes at the U.W., doing reading and informal research. Sometimes it seemed to Liza as if Barbara were conducting experiments on herself, testing limits, treading into uncharted areas. Liza had wondered if Barbara was training herself or punishing herself or losing herself.

The tiny cosmos of drugs and sex that revolved around Jan s did not unravel Barbara, Liza had long since decided; rather it accelerated a fragmentation that had begun years ago. What the experience at Jan's did was grab the loose shreds of her psyche and yank. When Barbara quit the parlor, she departed frazzled and disturbed. Her sense of self and reality were as askew as clippings of yarn thrown across a floor, which didn't make her much different from the other women hopelessly orbiting that crazy universe.

Lizas tea was cold. The moonlight had shifted, and the china cups appeared cracked. The phone cord was wrapped around her forearm, serpentine.

Liza wanted to hang up, but she couldn't. She tugged another cigarette from what three hours ago had been a new pack and was now a couple of loose sticks.

Why did she participate in these marathon conversations, which were really Barbaras maddening monologues? Liza gazed at the shadows of her kitchen, at a bulb of garlic on the counter, at potatoes the shape of rocks, at a toaster cover that looked like an Easter bonnet her mother had worn one spring, at the rack of McCormick spice tins in rows as neat as teeth.

Barbara talked. Liza turned to the window. It was April and a time for recovery and resurgence. She watched the smoke crawl from her cigarette. The tulips quivered in an early breeze.

— 23 —

The day after Hoffman's arraignment for the murder of Harry Berge a toxicologist at the state crime lab in Madison, following the sensitivities of his nose, made a startling discovery regarding the death of Jerry Davies.

Since March 28th, Kenneth Kempfert had been examining selected materials from the Davies autopsy, trying to ascertain if something of a chemical nature had contributed to Daviess expiration. Lung, liver, urine, kidney, brain, and blood specimens were subjected to standard tests, but no abnormalities were found. The negative results surprised the police investigation team and added to the aura of mystery that hovered over Daviess sudden and inexplicable demise.

For Kempfert it meant further inquiry. He delved deeper, using more sophisticated and elaborate techniques. Samples of blood, urine, and liver were analyzed for the presence of drugs and other extractables. It was a tedious process. A separate test had to be administered for each suspected foreign substance, and there was no hint as to what, if any, lethal toxins might be involved. Ordinarily Valium would not have been considered, but because of the vial in the bathroom it was checked. A specialized extraction process designed to maximize the detection of diazepam—Valium s generic name—was utilized with the blood samples. The gas chromatograph registered no significant traces, although a short peak in the graph indicated that diazepam of a therapeutic dosage may be present. Low levels of caffeine were found in the urine and the stomach contents. The county pathologist had already determined that the stomach contained food elements which very likely constituted chili. However, a milligram or two of diazepam, combined with coffee and chili, were not intrinsically fatal.

Kempfert expanded the search. Systematically he evaluated the blood for other chemicals and toxins, such as carbon monoxide, arsenic, botulinym, lead. A list was compiled and checked. He even tested for an exotic snake

venom because of an article he'd read in the evening newspaper. None of the potentially poisonous substances graded out positive.

Every day Chuck Lulling telephoned or visited the University Avenue lab, anxious to know of the latest findings. It got so that Kempfert recognized the sound of Lullings footsteps and the smell of his pipe tobacco. He could also read the impatience and fatigue on the detectives face. The skin edging the eyes no longer appeared wearied with wisdom but looked cracked with age. Lullings mustache was predominated by gray, whereas only a few months previous it had seemed stocked with a profusion of black. The belly sagged rounder. The shoulders slacked.

Lulling had less than a month before retirement, and the notion of going out a loser in the Hoffman case ate at his gut. He was acutely aware that Kempfert was no magician. He was a scientist whose meticulous efforts could break the case. Yet Lulling wanted magic. He pestered and cajoled Kempfert because he knew the power of the laboratory. He knew the lab could discern the subtle and the sinister.

Thus Kempfert elaborated his examinations, earnestly testing the tubes of Daviess blood, chasing a phantom chemical culprit. Other projects were neglected or relegated to the rest of the lab crew. As the days and tests passed without offering an answer, Kempfert himself wondered if Lulling was prodding him in an endless pursuit. The list of fatal drugs was long enough to be infinite. Maybe accidental drowning was not as absurd as it had initially seemed.