False Witness (2 page)

They had entered the apartment, Sanderalee Dawson and unidentified male, stopping while she hung her angora hat and scarf and navy blue jogging jacket on the old-fashioned railroad-car hat rack in the hallway: brass antique, barely turn of the century. They had moved into the perfection of the living room. She had taken some things from the small refrigerator behind the bar and set them on a large tray: a bottle of white wine; a bottle of Perrier water; a bowl of limes, uncut; some cheeses ready on a small china plate. There were two tall crystal glasses set on the bar, the ice cubes melting, the mineral water not poured, the elegant green bottle opened by a sterling silver opener and a sterling silver bottle cap for recapping.

“She seems to have been preparing for a social evening, at least for a friendly snack. They never got to it. It’s a little hard to trace the sequence,” Jim Barrow admitted. He turned and pointed to a small heap of silky undergarments. “Those, the bra and bikini underpants, were found right there. But the victim was found in the kitchen dressed in her lightweight ski sweater and jogging pants. Peculiar.”

It was peculiar. Jim pointed to a small object on the rug beside the bar. We both knelt, careful not to touch anything. It was a beautiful silver unicorn with about two inches left of what probably had been a four-inch silver horn. There was blood on the remnant of the horn and on the beautiful body of the fallen good luck symbol.

“My guess is that he attacked her suddenly, without warning, since she was getting ready for a quiet drink of soda water.” Jim Barrow shook his head. “That’s the trouble nowadays, Lynne, everyone drinking damn bubble water instead of something sensible like Scotch. I’d say the unicorn was on the counter and she grabbed it. My guess is that she connected. Unless we find that broken-off piece of silver horn, the ‘male-unknown’ might have it imbedded in him somewhere. The blood on the unicorn could be his or hers.”

We stood up. Barrow’s voice was soft and intense. It ignored the presence of all the technicians, the police personnel in the room, and created a lonely intimacy. I faced into the room with him as he described, from the condition of the victim, the assault: beating, tearing, ripping; rape, sodomy, the near-murder which yet may have been accomplished.

It lingered; something of the dark passions remained and intensified the thought of Sanderalee alone with some madman. She, the center of this carefully created place of beauty and serenity, the reason for this place, this setting, had been the sole and isolated and vulnerable target of a terrible and unanticipated force.

Barrow led me to Sanderalee’s bedroom. It was a quiet oasis, which she had obviously created for herself and to hell with the decorator. There was a feeling of controlled chaos: yes, it’s cluttered, but damn it, it’s my clutter and I know where everything is. There was a stack of papers and notebooks and magazines on the glass-topped desk; there was a small dish of penny-candy on the table next to the bed; a fancy French telephone; a doodle pad; stuffed teddy bears and pink elephants and rag-dolls on the bed. A shelf of Madame Alexander dolls, black and white, elegant, expensive, untouched, their lovely little eyes seeing everything with disdain and disinterest.

“You got dolls in your bedroom, Lynne?” Barrow asked.

“I had my last doll when I was about eight or nine. And then I realized the trap that was being set for me.”

“And so you turned to law books and university applications. What’s your bedroom look like, Lynne?”

“Steel furniture. Japanese mat on the floor. You know.”

“Oh, Lynne, Lynne, were I a few years younger. And not married and the father of ten fine children and grandfather of six. You and I could have had a fine time of it. Here, take a look at this bathroom. Must have imported the whole damn thing from Hollywood.”

There was, indeed, the look of Hollywood. A large redwood tub with all kinds of interesting devices: brushes, hoses, controls, little seating platforms or whatever. The room itself was huge—a swinger’s family room. There was a conventional stall shower; the toilet was carefully concealed in its own little compartment. Mirrored walls on two sides of the room. Actually they were sliding doors, which hid closets containing more clothes than your local friendly department store.

And a lovely round sink, a flowered bowl set on a marble pedestal. The flowers in the bowl were covered with a bright, watery red. Sanderalee’s date had washed some of the blood off his hands in this room.

“My guess is he left her unconscious in the kitchen. She never made it in here. He seems to have gone exploring for God knows what reason.” Jim pointed to blood smears on the mirrored doors and on the doorframe. They were smudges, as though made by the brushing of a bloody sleeve. “Then, he washed his hands in here. Doesn’t seem to have touched anything. See that bloody washcloth? He used it to turn on the water faucet. Very careful about his fingerprints. I don’t think we’ll find any from the ‘alleged perpetrator.’ ”

“All the blood, Jim? My God, what the hell did he do to her?”

Barrow looked at me in surprise and, apologetically, he said, “I thought you knew about all the injuries, Lynne. I assumed your man, Jones, told you.” His firm arm around my shoulders led me into the hallway, through the living room, past the small expensive little custom bar into an antiseptic kitchen: a glaringly white room. Floors, walls, ceiling, cabinets white. Butcher-block countertops; stainless steel sinks; restaurant large freezer and refrigerator and stove. Brightly lit. More shocking because of the stark contrast: red on white. More blood than I had ever seen in one place before. And I have been on the scene of some very gory homicides.

There was a heavy meat cleaver on the floor, professional type. Bloody.

White telephone receiver swinging slightly along the floor, covered with blood.

“It’s still hard to trace the action, but I’d say the sexual assault took place in the living room. Now, her getting those clothes on—that’s a puzzle, but she was dressed when she came into the kitchen. At least, that’s an assumption; makes more sense than that he came in and put the clothes on her afterward. Well, at any rate, she made it into the kitchen and apparently there was a further struggle. Can’t say who grabbed the cleaver first; maybe she did, but he sure had it last.

“He hacked off her left hand.” Jim Barrow’s right hand chopped through the air smartly toward his left wrist. “Whack-o. Severed clean at the wrist. Her hand was clutching the service telephone receiver when the uniformed men arrived.”

Jim Barrow was a large bear-type man, the kind who probably never in his life had to get involved in personal violence. Just his size, his presence, would discourage any challenger. He was a gentle man: strong, warm, reassuring. I leaned into him for a minute, grateful that I could do this. It was one of those woman-perks and I was grateful for it.

His arm turned me from the spectacular red and white horror.

“Gee, I thought you knew, kid. I would have prepared you a little. Her
other
injuries are pretty bad. This guy came on like Attila the Hun, at least. From what I got so far, he slugged her hard enough to break the jawbones both sides of her face, her cheekbones, several of her teeth.” His strong pushing led us back into the living room where we both stared at the mess and Jim released me and pointed into the kitchen. “I’d say that somehow, probably in a state of shock, she managed to get back into the living room. Hence, this particular pool of blood. Then, I guess she wandered back inside the kitchen, where Mr. Doyle, the doorman, and the two uniformed men found her. She would have strangled if that young cop hadn’t reacted fast.”

“Strangled? She would have strangled?”

“Oh,” Jim Barrow said softly. “I didn’t tell you about her other ... injury.”

“My God, besides rape and sodomy and dismemberment and broken face bones and teeth, Jim. Besides all that, what the hell else could he have done to her?”

“Well, this she might have done to herself. No, not really, I mean during the course of the struggle. She put up a hell of a fight.” Jim rolled his lower lip between his teeth, then pantomimed a blow to his chin. “Bit her lower lip off,” he said.

T
IMOTHY DOYLE WAS A
lovely man with a Mickey Rooney face and thick white theatrically long hair. He watched me carefully as I examined the titles of the paperbacks that filled three shelves on the wall of the little cubby just off the entrance vestibule. His shrewd bright blue eyes sparkled at my surprise.

He had impressed me properly and we sat across the tiny table from each other, hands wrapped around mugs of tea.

“I hope it’s not too sweet, my dear. I lace it with honey and lemon that I prepare special for the energy it gives. Not with your standard Irishman booze. I’m your oddball, sober, non-drinking non-stereotype, though that dummy Arthur Watsizname out there keeps asking wasn’t I maybe off dozin’ or boozin’ and missed seein’ this ... attacker leave the building.”

“I’ve just glanced at your statement. Now you tell me. Don’t worry about exact times or anything. Not right now. Right now, I just want to hear you tell me.”

He nodded and took one noisy sip of tea, held it in his mouth for a moment, then swallowed.

“Ms. Dawson came home from the studio at her usual time, maybe one-twenty, one-thirty or so. The studio limo brought her.”

He hesitated.

“Okay, she was brought home by the studio limo. You took her up to the eighth floor. Alone at this time?”

“Yes, ma’am. Alone. About fifteen minutes later,” he waved a hand, “as you said, you can check the times with my statement—well, she buzzed the elevator and I went up and brought her down.”

“Do you always escort passengers? No one rides up or down alone?”

“That’s exactly right. It’s an old-fashioned building; nothing automatic or modern. We just do things as we’ve done things all along. Now, then: she was dressed in her jogging clothes. Navy blue outfit with the green and white stripes; light blue fluffy knit hat and scarf—angora, is it? the kind of fluffy that gets all over you.”

Noted.

“How did she seem to you? Her mood.”

“Tense. Tight. Wound up.”

“Say anything to you?”

“Not a word; nothing. Nor I to her. So off she goes. I held the door open and she started off to the right, toward the Circle.”

“How far did you watch her go?”

He shook his head. “That was it. Just the direction: toward the Circle. Okay. It’s about two-thirty now and she’s back. And she’s got a runner with her.”

I took a deep breath. Timothy Doyle described him to me.

“I’m five-nine, so I measure everyone up or down from me, as I’m a middle-sized man, you might say. He was close to six feet, give or take an inch.” He held up his hand, interrupting himself. “Most important fact: he was a
white man.”

“All right. What did he look like? Light hair, dark hair, color of his eyes? Just in your own words, Mr. Doyle.”

“I never examined his face, Ms. Jacobi. I never even took more than a quick glance. I noticed his white hands. I could say only that he was white and that is exactly all I can say about what he looked like.” Sadly, he added, “I could not identify him at all, Ms. Jacobi, as I did not look at his face.”

Terrific. A wonderful dream witness; but he had not looked at the perpetrator’s face. Mr. Doyle had been, as always, discreet.

“Did they talk about anything in particular in the elevator, Mr. Doyle?”

He closed his eyes for a moment; his wide forehead crumpled with thought. He shook his head.

“They never said a word, Ms. Jacobi. Not a single word. Neither him nor her; nor did I. Beyond maybe a nodding acknowledgment, you know, when I let them in, ‘Ms. Dawson, ma’am.’ It wouldn’t have been the thing, do you understand, for me to have given the man the once-over.”

“All right, then. You took them up to the eighth floor. Neither of them spoke to you or to each other. They got off and headed for her apartment and you went back down to your desk. And then?”

And then about an hour or so later, the light on his switchboard flashed and flashed, on and off sporadically. He plugged in to answer Sanderalee’s summons and heard the terrible sounds. Sounds that he’d never heard before, but so terrible that he had not a moment’s doubt of disaster.

“It’s a strange and funny thing, but I had a kind of
déjà vu
experience,” he told me with solid simplicity. “I felt a premonition. I heard the sounds coming from that poor girl’s telephone and without even thinking about it, I went right to the front door and as if it was all arranged, there was a patrol car parked not twenty feet away. It’s not a usual thing; I doubt it’s ever been just at that spot. Anyway, I just called out to them to come quickly. I guess something in my voice told them this was serious. They came. Two young patrolmen. Oh, so very young; the older of the two not more than twenty-five or -six, but the youngster maybe twenty-two or -three, poor lad. Not prepared for what we walked into. As if you could prepare for such a sight. But anyway ...”

I held up my hand and he waited politely. “You went with them, into the elevator, right? You, in effect, left the door unguarded, right?”

He drew himself up stiffly, vaguely insulted. “Yes, in effect.”

“Mr. Doyle, you and the patrolmen went up to the eighth floor and got off the elevator. From that point on, tell me everything you saw. Everything you heard. Slowly.”

He crossed himself swiftly; I wondered when was the last time he’d done that. It seemed an act of superstition rather than of faith.

“Ah, Jesus God, it was that terrible.” His brogue went thick and soft; almost a different voice—a different man. His bright blue eyes clouded over; his tongue licked dry lips and his large, strong hand squeezed the tea mug tightly, then trembled as he set it on the small table. He looked directly at me, but he was seeing the eighth floor: the apartment that reeked of Sanderalee’s agony.

“At first, we couldn’t find her, you know. We heard the noise, the soft groaning, like a wee animal; softer even, like a hurt little bird. And of course, I realized and I told the policemen: the kitchen. That’s where the intercom phone is and she’d been calling down and that’s where she’d be. We walked right through that room, the living room, right through, right past all that upset, the chairs knocked over, the things pushed aside. The blood.”