The Price of Silence (2 page)

“Good for you.You’re a fast learner.There’s no reason to apologize.”

“I am happy to see you, Lady Teacher.”

She had slipped from my mind, but now I was again intrigued by her.“Please call me Emma.”

“Emma,” she repeated tentatively.

“Come visit us in class.You’ll inspire my students to work harder. Please.”

An-ling shifted her weight, then turned to look down Broadway.

“I’d better go,” I said. “My students are waiting. Bye. Please come visit.” As I turned to go back down, An-ling gave my shoulder a squeeze.Taken aback by the intimacy of the gesture, moments passed before I twisted around. She was already crossing the street, the black portfolio slapping her long thigh, the bulging knapsack on her back making her hips look too small to sustain that weight. Her stride was wide and fast; she knew where she was going. I silently wished her all the luck she would need. I knew she would not visit the class.

On the trip downtown to the Lower East Side, I caught a few riders staring at me. Close scrutiny in a confined space is a New York City no-no, and I briefly wondered why I was getting so much attention since my looks are unremarkable, as were my clothes. I started correcting papers and tried to ignore them.

“Who’ ’appen to you?” Esmeralda asked as soon as I stepped into class.

“Nothing.Why?”

“Sanger.”
She pointed at my left shoulder.

“No,” Jennifer said. “Peony blossom. Means love and good fortune.”

I pulled at my blouse—a white silk one that Tom and Josh had given me for my last birthday—in order to see. I made out what did look like petals. Later, in the bathroom mirror, the petals turned out to be four fingerprints of red paint.

An accident most likely—she hadn’t realized she had paint on her fingers. It was the explanation that made the most sense.

Officer William Flanagan, a twenty-two-year veteran of the police force, is a big man with a thick neck, greying red hair and a drinker’s bloated face. He was the first officer to arrive at the crime scene in response to an anonymous phone call.

“Please tell the jury how you got into the building,” Guzman says.

“The front door to the building was locked, so first I rang all the bells, but there’s no buzzer to let people in and no one came down to open the door, so we jimmied the lock.”

“And once you got upstairs to the fifth floor, what did you find?”

“The apartment door was locked too. I checked to see if it had been tampered with, but it hadn’t been. We jimmied that lock too.”

“Did you later dust the door for prints?”

“Yes, after we found the body.”

“Did you find any prints?”

“No.”

“How many apartments are there to each floor?”

“One. It’s a narrow building.”

“Is there a fire escape?”

“Yes, but you can only get to it from the window next to the elevator.”

“You mean the window in the hallway?”

“Yes, sir.”

“In other words, Officer Flanagan, if someone tried to get into the victim’s apartment using the fire escape, he or she would have only gotten as far as the hallway. He or she would have still had to deal with the locked apartment door. Is that correct?”

“Yes, sir.”

Guzman turns to the jury to ask his next question. “Then in order for the murderer to get into the apartment, the victim either opened the door or the murderer had a key, is that correct?”

Fishkin shoots up from his chair. “Objection, Your Honor.”

In the stunning heat of an Indian summer day, I walked across the Columbia campus on my way to the Casa Italiana for a lecture. October is always a bad, restless month, during which I get the urge to change apartments, change jobs, when I wish myself in a burlap sack being spun until I lose all sense of direction and have no idea where home is. It’s the month our daughter,Amy, died, sixteen years ago.

An-ling was lying, eyes closed, on the Low Library steps, propped up on her elbows, chin to the sky. She was wearing a blue Columbia T-shirt and a short red skirt. Her feet bare, small like her hands. No bracelet interrupted the sweep of skin from elbow to hand. She is so young, I thought.

I dropped down on the steps, next to her feet. Five weeks had passed since we’d seen each other at the subway entrance.“Hi, An-ling.”

At the sound of my voice she sat up, hugged her legs closed. “I ruin your blouse.You are angry with me.”

“No. It was an accident, wasn’t it?”

“I am so sorry. So sorry.” She looked stricken.

“It’s all right.”The strength of her regret embarrassed me and I awkwardly patted her shoulder.“Really. It was just an old blouse.”

“No accident. I give you red because I like you. Red is happy news in China. A bride wears red, gifts come in red envelopes. If a letter comes without a red border, it means bad news. I paint your blouse so you remember me.”

“No chance of forgetting, that’s true. Are you at the School of the Arts here?”

“Yes, I want to be artist.” She closed her eyes, relaxed back onto her elbows and let the sun stroke her face. It was a strong sun that would make me blister later if I stayed out for too long, a legacy from my unknown father, maybe an Irishman. My maternal side is Sicilian, at one with the sun
.
I needed to get up and go to the lecture on the Italian immigrant experience, but being with An-ling was a welcome distraction.

“Are you a painter?” I asked.

“For many years, before Mao,women have no history.We work hard like men but no one see us. My mother teach me I must make people always remember me. It is my duty to all my woman ancestors.”

“There are many ways of being remembered.”

“I paint peony blossom on your blouse.That is my way.”

Her expression was sweet, soft. I wondered how old she was.

Students were calling to each other.Feet bounced over the steps like so many dropped balls. It was the time between classes.The lecture would have been well underway.

I stood up, held out my hand.“Goodbye,An-ling.Be well.”She turned my hand to look at my palm.“I tell your fortune?” The movement revealed the inside of her naked wrist.The skin looked bleached where the bracelet had kept it hidden.A light purple line, thin as a blade, extended across the band of white skin. I couldn’t see the other wrist, but I knew, without a doubt, that it too had a scar.A wave of pity and nausea overwhelmed me, followed by what I can only describe as intense grief.

“Your life like a mountain. High, low. Soon very high.”

She looked up, joyful with the good news. She didn’t realize her secret was out.

“That’s great, thank you.” I retrieved my hand. “I have to go.”

“I am sorry I paint on your blouse.”

“It’s okay. Good-bye now.”

She bobbed her head, a pinched, sad look now on her face.“Bye, Lady Teacher.”

I walked quickly down the steps and crossed the central aisle of the campus. I had the sensation that she was following me with her eyes. I turned around to wave, but she had offered her face back to the sun.

Guzman stands behind the podium placed next to the jury stand. “When you arrived at the crime scene,” he asks the medical examiner, “where was the body of An-ling Huang?”

“Behind a painted screen.” Doctor Malin Patashi, originally from Pakistan, is a plump, mustached man in a tight blue suit and a yellow silk tie. “She was naked, laid out on a futon, her arms crossed over her chest. Her body was covered by a sheet.”

“In your expert opinion, Doctor Patashi, is that position consistent with death by suicide?”

“No.”

“Why is that?”

“As I stated a few minutes ago, the young lady died of asphyxiation caused by the expansion of insulation foam in her throat, a process that takes from thirty to fifty seconds. A short time, but painful nonetheless. Under those circumstances, the victim would not have stayed motionless under a sheet with her arms crossed over her chest.”

Fishkin stands up. “Objection to the use of the word ‘victim.’ ”

“Sustained,” says Judge Sanders. She turns to the witness.

“Please refer to An-ling Huang by her name.”

Patashi strokes his tie. “Had An-ling Huang been conscious when her air supply was cut off with insulation foam, she would have writhed and not lain motionless under a sheet.”

“During your examination of Miss Huang’s body in the lab, what were you able to establish about her physical condition?”

“The young lady was healthy, with good muscle tone. She had no scarring or lesions in or around her genitalia and anus, which signifies that she was not sexually molested. There was also no trace of semen in or on her body. We checked for possible pregnancy, as that could involve motive.”

“What was the result?”

“She was not pregnant.”

“Were you able to make a determination as to the time of death?”

“I was indeed able to. After taking into consideration body temperature, the degree of rigor mortis, also livor mortis, and the chemical changes in the eyes, I determined that the estimated time of death was between the hours of two o’clock p.m. and five o’clock p.m. of that day, April nineteenth.”

“Thank you, Doctor Patashi. No further—”

The next day, after my classes were over, I came back uptown and went directly to the School of the Arts at Columbia.The painting division was on the fourth floor of Dodge Hall. I wandered through the various studios, filled with the apricot light of the setting sun.There were only a few students around, chatting, cleaning up their palettes, critiquing each other’s work. A tall, reed-thin African American in a tattered bathrobe walked past me, her head bound in turquoise silk. Her likeness was painted with varying degrees of talent on the canvases perched on easels thoughout the room.

I asked a girl standing in front of a row of sinks if she knew An-ling Huang.

“I don’t know everyone’s name.”

“She’s Chinese.”

She raised a ringed eyebrow.“Yeah, with that name.We’ve got a lot of Asian students.” Above her head a large sign announced SEXUAL HARASSMENT MUST STOP!

“She’s quite tall, five-foot-seven or -eight, hair to her shoulders, wide forehead, pointed chin. A lovely . . .” smile, I was going to add, but the student turned away.

“Maybe you could check with the Dean’s office,” the ringed eyebrow suggested as she soaped her paintbrushes.

“It’s one floor down.”

What would I say when I got there? “Dear Dean, I am looking for one of your students. Her name is An-ling Huang and once she tried to kill herself.”

I suddenly felt foolish.What if the knife had slipped while she was helping her mother in the kitchen, or she’d fallen while carrying a glass bowl? Maybe it was only a shallow cut, a teenage cry for attention now forgotten. An-ling was not my responsibility; she didn’t need or want my help.

I didn’t go to the Dean’s office. Later, I threw the blouse away, went back to Saks to get one just like it for Tom’s and Josh’s sake, and put An-ling Huang out of my mind.

Arnold Fishkin approaches the podium to cross-examine the witness. He consults a notepad before speaking.

“Doctor Patashi, you told the court that An-ling Huang had a contusion on the back of her head severe enough to have knocked her unconscious, which, in your opinion, allowed someone to insert the insulation can tube into Miss Huang’s throat without a struggle, is that right?”

“That is what I told the court.”

“And it is your opinion that the contusion was caused by someone hitting Miss Huang’s head hard against the floor?”

“That is my opinion.”

“I ask you if it is possible, in your expert opinion, that the contusion found on the back of Miss Huang’s head was the result of her falling backward on her own? Slipping on something, for instance, or suddenly fainting.”

“That seems
highly
unlikely. The victim was in good health, and—”

“I am asking if it is possible,”—Fishkin pauses—“possible that Miss Huang fell and hit the back of her head on her own.”

Patashi looks down at his lap. “Possible.”

Judge Sanders leans toward the witness. “Please speak up. The jury has to hear you.”

Patashi raises his head. “It is possible.”

“Is it not also possible that Miss Huang inserted the tube in her own throat and then pressed the nozzle because she wanted to end her life?”

Patashi’s face seizes with indignation. “I have seen many suicides in my career. Two hundred, three hundred, maybe more.

Never has anyone killed himself in such a way!”

“Is there any physical reason which would have prevented Miss Huang from killing herself in just that way?”

The witness sighs. “No.”

“One more point.” Fishkin glances at the notebook in his hand. “Could An-ling Huang have been laid out on the futon in the manner you found her after her death? Before rigor mortis set in?”

Patashi looks puzzled. “Of course, that is clearly what happened.”

“How quickly after death does rigor mortis usually set in?”

“Much has to be taken into consideration. Air temperature, humidity, the victim’s weight, how active she was before death.”

“Give me an approximation. Thirty minutes? An hour?”

“Not so quickly. It begins after four hours. That is an approximation. Four hours is safe to say.”

“Four hours. That’s a long time.” Fishkin takes time to rearrange his notes on the podium, then addresses the witness again. “Wouldn’t you agree, Doctor Patashi, that between An-ling Huang’s death and the setting in of rigor mortis there were four hours—no, let’s be conservative and say three hours in which the defendant could go to An-ling Huang’s loft and find her friend already dead and lay her body out on the futon? Wouldn’t you agree there was plenty of time for that to happen?”

Patashi takes a handkerchief out of his breast pocket and wipes his face. “Yes.” He refolds the handkerchief, keeps it in his hand.

“Did you, during your examination of Miss Huang’s body, observe any old scars?”

“I did observe.”

“How many?”

“Two.”

“Please describe them to the court.”

“The victim had two thin, clean, almost identical scars running across the inside of each wrist.”