Love Her Madly (3 page)

“Rona Leigh Glueck's.”

“Why?”

“I couldn't sleep. I just watched Dan Rather interview her. He inspired me to run downtown and get the file.”

“Poppy, you've got to learn to delegate—”

“I know, I know. But she's got ten or eleven days left, depending on whether you call three
A.M
. today.”

“Where does your interest lie, Agent Rice?”

“In her wrists. They're as tiny as a child's. How much does an ax weigh?”

“Depends on the ax.” He took the file from me and covered his lap, alas. He rifled through and took out a page. “Twenty-four pounds.”

“Fairly heavy, no?”

“But she was young and strong.”

“Young, yes; strong, no.” I reached over and took out the medical report. “Upon her arrest she was five feet two, eighty-eight pounds, and suffering from drug addiction, alcoholism, chlamydia, and malnutrition.”

He said, “Well, I weigh around one-eighty. You got a calculator?”

“Not on me.”

“Don't get up. Twenty-four pounds is a little more than a quarter of her body weight at the time. A quarter of mine is forty-five pounds. I could swing a forty-five-pound ax, no problem.”

“Your ratio isn't figuring in the malnutrition, disease, all the rest. And what strength would you need to pull the ax back out of a chest if it's sunk in all the way through, lodged in the ribs and breastbone, say? Probably even more.”

“Probably a lot more.” He shuffled through the pictures and reports. “A dozen chops. Have you read this cop's notes?”

I looked over. “Not yet.”

He read what I was to hear the next day from Dispatcher Melvin Hightower. “Cop says when she confessed she was laughing. She said she enjoyed killing … let's see … Melody Scott. Said she had a pop every time the ax hit home. What's that, an orgasm?”

“Must be what they call them in Texas. But she was lying. Bragging.”

“She was?”

“Murderers in a frenzy don't take a break to concentrate on having orgasms. It's myth anyway, multiple orgasms. One, and your heart's pounding, your muscles are contracting, and you have to struggle to catch your breath. A few in a row would blow the top of your head off.”

“Want to get in a frenzy and try?”

I picked up the file from his lap and looked. A change had come over Joe. We had nice frenzied sex there on the sofa. On the sofa and on the floor too, and during some of it we were apparently airborne. But I couldn't concentrate. I faked the orgasm. Joe didn't mind, though, because he said he never knows the difference anyway and because I told him it can be fun to fake an orgasm. One time we were making love and he started making all these noises and doing God knows what and I asked him what was going on and he told me he was faking an orgasm. I laughed so hard I had hiccups for an hour. I do enjoy this man.

Now Joe went off to my bed. I put my Victoria's Secrets back on and read a little more of the report. The little more I read was unbelievable. I went into my bedroom and got in with Joe. I felt bad waking him.

“Joe?”

“What, baby?”

“You faking sleep?”

“Yes.”

I put on the bedside lamp. “Joe, the jury sentenced Rona Leigh to death rather than life in prison because of the testimony of the prosecutor's key witness”—I waved a paper I'd brought with me in front of his face—“a
forensic physician.
What the hell is that?”

“No such animal. You're either a pathologist or a coroner.”

“That's what I always thought. This expert witness said … let's see … he said, ‘Diabolical effort and determination was necessary in order for the accused to keep pulling the ax out of Melody Scott's chest in order to swing it again and again and again.'

“Now get this, Joe. When Rona Leigh's defender questioned him as to how she managed to do such a thing, considering her weight and condition, he said glee gave her the strength, rather than muscle.
Glee.
Now there's a forensic determination.”

I noticed Joe's eyes were shut.

“Can I tell you more thing?”

He mumbled, “Sure.”

“The forensic physician topped off his testimony by telling the court that the evidence wasn't entirely circumstantial. That Rona Leigh's
odor
was still on the ax handle.”

His eyes opened. He said, “Objection,” and then he closed them again.

“I certainly hope there was an objection. Even so, the jury got to hear what he said.”

Jurors love doctors. They love expert coroners hired by the prosecution. They admire what they think is scientific evidence. That's because they flunked high school chemistry just like the lawyers. People go into law because they can't figure out the business end of a Bunsen burner. But here was a new one on me. A physician testifying in a court of law, under oath, that a killer's odor was left on the evidence.

“Joe, pretrial, the public defender sent a letter to my lab when it was under the direction of my predecessor, may he die of leprosy. The defender wanted to know if someone of his client's height, body weight, and physical condition was capable of committing the crime. He'd seen what I saw tonight on TV. A copy of the letter is in the fucking file, and it's stamped
INADEQUATE PROCEDURE
. The original was returned unanswered, unless you count a rubber stamp as an answer. Son of a bitch.”

Joe patted my thigh with the strength of an ant. I let him sleep.

The crime lab had been an ongoing travesty for a very long time. Agents used to feel free to use rubber stamps at whim without taking the trouble to explain to querying law officers the procedures for filling out the proper forms when seeking assistance from the FBI. Those seeking assistance who were not deemed worthy of response never followed up, since public defenders like the one assigned to Rona Leigh were either inexperienced, incompetent, or burdened by unrealistic workloads.

I climbed out of bed, went back to my computer, and put case # 8037568-8233 at the top of my list. I would find out the answer Rona Leigh's public defender didn't get seventeen years ago from the FBI.

Then I got back in with Joe. He mumbled something.

“What, sweetie?”

“I'll bet you're figurin' the boyfriend maybe did it.”

“Why not? Tells her she did it, she believes him, and then the cops remove any doubts that might crop up in her pathetic head. That way they kill two birds with one stone. Worked. I imagine the boyfriend must have been executed at some point.”

“I think I read he died in jail. Poppy, honey?”

“What?”

“Before you take this one on, see if there's something else besides her weak physical condition. Just that won't cut it.”

He was right. “I've got Dr. Glee.”

“One more besides. Three is always a convincing number.”

Three would happen the next day, when police dispatcher Melvin Hightower revealed a puppeteer.

I gazed at my ceiling. Joe's breathing had become regular. I dropped the papers on the floor, switched off the light, slid down under the sheet, burrowed into Joe, and closed my eyes. I fell into a deep sleep. Three seconds later I heard the click of my clock radio, followed by the voice of Don Imus telling me the President was a moron.

2

After I had my chat with Melvin, the Houston police dispatcher, I went in to see my director. We meet fairly regularly and I keep him informed as to what I'm working on, while he counts on my assistant when he needs to reach me in the field. Once in a while he has a few ideas of his own as to who belongs on my list, and I respect that. Then there are the occasional favors we ask of each other.

Not too long after I started my new job, he figured I owed him a little something. He called me in.

“I need a week from you, Poppy.”

“When?”

“Now.”

He described a “special concern” of his boss. That would be the President. The President had a very dear friend who needed help. From the FBI. The dear friend was a Catholic cardinal—someone was dipping into his till.

I asked, “How come me? I don't need to waste time swatting at gnats.”

“I know. But I have to have someone who won't make a mistake and who will know to step lightly, since lightly is what is so called for here.”

“Give him Auerbach. He's the best technician we've got. That anybody's got. He's never made a mistake in his life. Tell him to wear sneakers instead of those gunboats he's always clumping around in, and I'm sure—”

“You can take a man out of his gunboats, but you can't—”

“Shit.”

“Poppy, we're dealing with a powerful and prominent man here. One
all
politicians have utmost regard for. A household name, which makes things even stickier. Sometimes I have to balance all that in. Of course, you know that too. You'll find the little Judas in their midst with no trouble.”

“Why don't they handle Judas internally the way Jesus did?”

“They tried. They went to the Jesuits. The Jesuits suggested the FBI.”

“Too busy cracking Vatican bank scandals.”

“Apparently.”

He stood and handed me the report he'd received and called out to my back, “Thanks, Poppy.”

The household name was Beltrán María Cardinal de la Cruz y García, the recently named very colorful prelate of the Archdiocese of New York. The new pope had traveled to Miami in order to harvest the most conservative of conservatives and plant him on Fifth Avenue. After he'd been in residence for about a year, he was informed that someone had been helping himself to the contents of the collection plate to the tune of ten million dollars in twelve years.

I consulted with Auerbach. He got together the software I'd need. He said, “At least it's New York. You'll get to see a play or something.”

“Anything good on Broadway these days?”

He gaped at me as if I were speaking Swahili.

It's hard to remember Auerbach doesn't know everything.

I went to New York and was welcomed by the cardinal with so much grace that I forgave my director and got the software going then and there. In two minutes I'd set up a vertical balance sheet and watched where it refused to remain vertical. Typical Ponzi scheme: Replace stolen old money with new money and then fake the balances. I said to the cardinal, “Have we got any priests or staff living the high life? A deacon with a house in the Caymans? Secretary with gambling debts? Mistress holed up at the Plaza? Bastard children squirreled away in the suburbs?”

He smiled. “If we did, we wouldn't have needed the FBI.” The smile faded. “I don't like this any more than you do. Find him.”

I apologized for being rude.

He said, “I accept your apology. But I understand why you are annoyed, Agent. I have taken advantage of my position. I hope you will forgive me that.”

Why not?

Took me more than a week though. Two weeks. The cardinal's bookkeeper, a very old priest, tiny and shy and kindly—so happy to help me—believed the Church in South America kept the peasants oppressed so the bishops could maintain their standing as the hemisphere's nobility. So he'd set up a very tidy laundry and diverted a goodly number of contributions to Chilean revolutionaries.

When all was said and done, the little bookkeeper was transferred to his new parish on a Hopi reservation in New Mexico, though I suggested jail. But cardinals are above the law. Their own law, preventing scandals, is paramount. He blessed me in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost and held out his ring to be kissed.

Then he said, “I hope that someday there may come a time when I can do a favor for you, Miss Rice.”

I said, “Eminence, just keep praying for me. I'm sure I need it.”

So now I got to remind my director of that mission. “You know how you insisted I go to New York awhile back? To do the favor for Cardinal de la Cruz?”

“I certainly do. And you didn't fail us.”

“I have to spend a solid block of time in Texas.” I told him about my interest in Rona Leigh Glueck.

“How long a block?”

“Ten days, max.”

He raised an eyebrow. “I guess there's no worry of your stretching it out to two weeks, is there?”

“No, sir, there isn't.”

He leaned way back into his big comfortable leather director's chair. “Poppy, it is not our job to find innocents on death row. Call that professor and his students out in Chicago—he's springing guys left and right.”

“But it's not his job either. Sir, it's no one's job. There is no regulatory commission to see that the condemned haven't been victims of a corrupt system. I want a job like this because I have the equipment. The professor doesn't. He only has chutzpah. It's time for the authorities, for the law, to set an example and not leave it to volunteer do-gooders, God bless them all the same.”

“There is legislation—”

“Ten days, sir.”

I plunked the letter on the desk, the one from Rona Leigh Glueck's public defender with the piss-off message stamped on it. He read it. He sighed. He gazed across his expanse of desk at me.

“Is there more to this?”

“Excuse me, sir?”

“I'm wondering, since there's so little time. Not a DNA situation either. And the governor of Texas … Jesus. You trying to prove something here, Poppy? Something personal with you I don't know about?”

Shrewd man.

“No.”

“All right, then. So exactly why do you think the ax murderer might not have done it?”

I was past the hard part. Good.

“
One,
she couldn't physically swing the ax: too weak, too small, too sick.
B,
there were no eyewitnesses except the wacko who was with her, and he's dead.
Three,
she showed the cops she was a hardhearted bitch and they found her attitude offensive.
D,
she was a braggart; in her state of mind at the time she thought it was cool to say she loved the act of murder.
Five,
Texas law authorities have a reputation for reveling in high success rates. They probably encouraged the bragging until they got her to sign a confession to same.
F,
a story was created and accepted, and juries like to believe that official stories are the true ones, that people don't make false accusations, that—”