A Twisted Path Page 2

  The attorney conferred with his client then joined Prole just out of Merrill’s earshot. Prole crooked a finger and led him into the kitchen. The crime scene guys were just getting busy but she stepped around them and brought the lawyer with her.

  “Sitting next to the body, holding the weapon, not objecting. She’s going downtown tonight.”

  The attorney barely looked at the body on the floor. “She’s in shock. You have no evidence to hold her, she’s no threat…” Prole interrupted.

  “She’s in shock because she just stabbed her husband to death, looks like a dozen times or so. Let’s cut the bullshit. She’s going in and you can talk to the judge tomorrow – or tonight if you’ve got his home number.” A little rancor edged into her voice. Prole hated the idea that having a lot of money got you a better deal, even if only a stay-out-of-jail card until the trial that got you convicted and strapped to a gurney and injected with a couple of drugs that would put you to sleep and stop your heart from beating. The attorney didn’t argue, just headed back to his client and made comforting sounds about having her out as quickly as possible. Prole appreciated skipping the back and forth. She returned the favor by not putting cuffs on Merrill as she led her out of the house and into the lights from half a dozen news cameras. It pissed Prole off, but maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea. A nice late night perp walk for the local stations and a good start to showing how this nice, quiet, rich housewife was a cold-blooded killer. Merrill didn’t resist or seem to really take in everything that was going on. The attorney had told her to keep quiet, which turned out to be unnecessary. He would follow in his Jaguar to be there as they walked through the process of booking her. Prole looked back through the open front door and saw the daughter, still sitting in the chair. She was crying, but not for her mother’s welfare. Prole hadn’t gotten more than a few sentences out of her, all of them angry and directed at her mother. Nothing about her father, but that’s who the tears were for now. The patrol guys would stay until the female neighbor who’d gotten past the growing mob out front and identified herself as a close family friend had gathered some things from the girl’s room. She saw the woman talking with the attorney before heading upstairs, a patrolman in tow to keep an eye on her while she got some clothes for the daughter. The discussion looked intense and then the lawyer, Margolin, kissed the woman on the cheek and went out the door. Full service attorney, Prole thought.

  Prole loaded Merrill into the back seat of the unmarked sedan and got in the front. No partner, just her. She didn’t slow down as much as she should have as she backed through the pressing crowd and onto the now-busy street. Shit, it was going to be a long night.

  Chapter Six

  Furyk hit the Play button and listened to the first of three messages. The young voice was hard to distinguish as male or female.

  “Mr. Furyk, it’s Jimmy. I’m really sorry, man, I mean…” Furyk knew what was coming. “I gotta take my mom to the doctor and it’s at 11, so I don’t know if I can work my shift. I’ll call Tiff and see if she can cover, but if not, I mean, I’m really sorry.”

  The second message was from Tiffany. She had class and couldn’t cover Jimmy’s shift. The third message was from his meat supplier. They were out of roasted turkey breast and he wouldn’t have any until the next day, afternoon at the earliest. It was going to be a long day. He headed back to the bedroom to get dressed for the drive over to the sandwich shop he owned on Ventura Blvd even though it was still dark out and would be for hours. He’d had the shop for three years, his big adventure in normal living. Hadn’t really worked out that way, but it helped create a balance. He thought about how hard it was to get good help and what lousy workers teenagers and college kids were and it helped him from thinking about guys like the Hummer driver. His moonlighting work introduced him to a lot of high-class guys like that. Dressed in his usual khakis and Polo shirt without the ridiculous emblem on the chest, he looked at the clock. 4:00 a.m. Goddamn dog. What the hell was he going to do for three hours at the shop? He made some instant coffee and sat on the couch. The leather crunched and he put his feet on the utilitarian coffee table and sipped from his mug. The remote was on the armrest and he flipped on the flat panel TV. It was set to the local news station and there must have been a car chase or some other world-shattering event because he was looking at an aerial shot of a neighborhood. The sound was muted; the brain-dead local anchors gave him a migraine. The picture was a tape and played on a loop. Then it cut to the front of a house, right under the helicopter, if the spotlight from above illuminating the scene were any indication. Another loop, ten seconds worth of a cop escorting a mousey woman out of the house. She must have really screwed things up to get this much attention. And she was out of it, not even bothering to cover her face or turn away like any self-respecting perp. The camera zoomed on her face but was too far away to keep the image still. Furyk was about to flip to ESPN when he stopped. His finger went to the Mute button and the cartoonish booming voice of the anchor in the studio started narrating mid-sentence. Furyk leaned in as the loop replayed and he took in the front of the house, the heavy iron plate hiding a modern peephole, and then the face of the woman. The name didn’t come to him right away, but the image and the memory did. Then the newsman’s voice brought it all back. “…was arrested this evening for the murder of her husband, prominent psychologist Carl Wick.” That was it – Wick. Merrill Wick. Furyk remembered the one time he’d met her.

  Chapter Seven

  By 3 a.m. Merrill had been through the degrading process of being booked at the LA County Jail. No first night transition at the comparatively cozy police station/jailhouse less than a mile from her home in Brentwood. Murder suspects went straight into the system. Margolin was able to keep her from being grilled by the cocky Prole, but couldn’t keep her from getting an orange jumpsuit and small cell. People didn’t realize how demoralizing and dehumanizing just the booking process was. It was like being a hunk of trash processed on an assembly line. Pounded, probed, labeled and passed along. Merrill floated through most of it, but shortly after midnight started to emerge from her torpor. Now Margolin was with her in the interrogation room, getting ready to leave and saying comforting things about getting bail the next morning. Her glaze-eyed look began to fade. Sitting in the cold windowless room with Prole going over what would be happening to her over the next few days, Merrill began to look afraid. She stood up from the steel table and matching chair, seeming to be shocked by the handcuffs she was now wearing.

  “What…why am I…” was about all she could get out. Margolin realized the initial shock was wearing off and the next response would be strong – confusion, anger, denial. He wanted to be sure she said nothing, and told her so in a stronger voice than he’d used before. It woke her up further, but also calmed her down.

  “Detective, I’d like a few minutes alone with my client.” Prole rolled her eyes, figuring it was kind of late in the process to be having the first serious client-attorney conversation, but left the room, throwing over her shoulder an admonition: “Ten minutes. I’m off shift and wanna get some sleep before the show starts again tomorrow.” She walked out the door without waiting for the comment she knew would come from the attorney, who didn’t care whether she got her rest.

  Alone in the room, Margolin took Merrill’s arm from across the table. He held it tightly, partly to make sure she was listening and partly to keep her seated. He could see the agitation roiling in her face. “Merrill, I’ve known you and Carl since before you were married. You’re the last person in the world I would expect to be sitting here with.” Merrill looked at him and the anger subsided – just hurt and confusion now. “First, not a goddamn word to anyone but me. Do you hear me?” His grip tightened. Merrill’s eyes widened and she nodded, looking small and meek. She had cut her hair recently; it used to be well down her back and was always clean and smooth, if not exactly luxurious. Now it was shoulder length, more girlish, the way she’d probably worn it as a teenager. Margol
in didn’t let go. “I need to hear you say it, Merrill. Say you won’t talk to anyone except for me. Don’t let them bully you.”

  Merrill whispered “yes,” then cleared her throat and said it again. “Yes, I mean, no, I won’t speak to anyone but you.” That satisfied him and he finally let go of her arm. She absently rubbed it but held his eyes.

  “Now, I have to ask you a question, Merrill. It’s the only time I’m going to ask, ever. I only need to know so I can decide on your defense. And I am going to defend you, even though Carl was my friend. So are you.” Merrill looked confused, not sure what was coming, and that concerned him. It should be obvious.

  “Merrill, did you kill Carl?” Her eyes widened as if lightning had suddenly shot out of his mouth. She pulled back, and her lips started to form an involuntary answer. But then she stopped.

  “I…I don’t…” She couldn’t, or didn’t want to, finish the sentence. He waited. Almost a full minute passed. Finally she made her decision.

  “I don’t know.”

  It wasn’t what he’d expected. “You don’t know? Or you don’t remember? Or you think you did but aren’t sure? What are you saying Merrill?” She didn’t do anything to lessen his exasperation.

  “I just…I mean, I don’t know if I did it. I don’t remember doing it. But…I don’t remember not doing it. I just remember seeing him there, dead.” Confusion was replaced by fear and then tears. Margolin didn’t show his thoughts. No more explanations tonight. They sat quietly for a few more minutes until Prole came noisily back into the room.

  “Anything else, counselor?” It was a rhetorical question. A policewoman had come in behind her and was stepping around to gather up Merrill.

  “Merrill, just remember what I said. Not one word.” He waited until they’d left and he stayed a moment to watch her walk down the hall toward the heavy metal door with double remote locks that would take her into the bowels of the County Jail.

  Chapter Eight

  A gorgeous view of the ocean dominated the bedroom. The house was propped on stilts, leaning heavily over the Malibu cliffs and ignoring gravity and the threat of earthquakes. The moon shone a streak over the calm ocean and burst through the glass covering the entire western bedroom wall. It was the only light except for the flicker of a large screen plasma television to one side. Both light sources glinted off the heavy school ring on the middle finger of the house’s owner as it swung through the air and backhanded the girl across the cheek. The crack of something hard hitting bone was audible over the drone of the television and she fell sideways off the bed. She barely felt it. The agony of her dislocated shoulder shut out everything else. It made the red cotton t-shirt that came down past her hips hang at a crazy angle off the shoulder. There had been a loud popping noise when he’d yanked her off the floor a few minutes earlier, when she’d been cowering under the vanity table, and dragged her back onto the bed. She lay on the floor now, grimacing and ruining the perfect lines of an otherwise pretty face. Though only sixteen, she’d been beaten up worse than this. Except he wasn’t done. Larry Brecker, only twenty pounds heavier and an inch taller than her but with a man’s strength, jumped off the bed. He hadn’t even bothered to put any shorts on and she could see he was excited by her pain. In his mind, he was Alexander the Great, conqueror of the Earth. Men feared him and women begged for his touch. They all deserved to be treated like the plebes that they were. Power surged in his veins and he was sure that if he looked down he’d see armor instead of his naked body. On the movie sets where he was the king behind the camera and everyone scraped and bowed, he had the power. But it was limited; he could only scream and yell and fire. Here, though, his power was unquestioned and complete. It thrilled him.

  She rolled over to protect her face, curling up into a ball in the middle of the floor. Like a ball, he kicked her hard in the back. The sharp pain made her arch and he grabbed her long black hair and pulled up from behind. She was half-lifted off the floor, facing the television. With her hair out of her eyes and her mind trying to go someplace calm, someplace far away, she focused on the television for a second. Helicopter shot of a beautiful house, as nice as the one she was now in, with lots of lights breaking the night and reporters and gawkers filling the driveway. She lost sight of the scene as he half dragged her back to the bed. She knew how it would end. For almost three months she’d been coming here, unable to say no to the man with three cars in the garage each worth more than her mother made in two years. There was always wine and better food than she was used to having, though everything tasted a little bitter knowing what would come later in the evening. It wasn’t always this violent, but just about. There was no one at her apartment in Panorama City to ask about the extra makeup she had been wearing lately, to cover bruises – her mother was always out, staying at some new boyfriend’s place. No one at school in her neighborhood paid attention to anything like this, the few days she actually showed up anymore. They had their own problems. She tried to go with the momentum as Brecker pulled her onto the bed but her shoulder hitting the mattress reignited the agony. She was on her back and he stood over her. He was skinny in the arms and legs, but in a flabby, weak way. A small belly protruding forward, Brecker couldn’t have been more that five foot six. He had started to sweat from the exertion and strands of hair fell into his face without the stiff gel he usually used to hold back the remaining wisps of long brown hair clinging to his crown. With one hand he started to choke her. She hated this. He wrapped his fingers around her throat, tightening until she began to choke. He was exultant. She knew it would last until she began to see spots, floaters in front of her eyes that meant the oxygen wasn’t getting to her brain. She’d read about it in biology class that year. Then he’d let go and watch her cough and gasp to catch her breath. Only this time Brecker pulled her up by her throat, closer to him, and it hurt in a new way. She didn’t know what to expect and it was a surprise when his other hand was suddenly hurtling toward her. She could hear something break in her face as the force from the punch took her out of his grip and slamming back into the bed. He stood back up, having straddled her just before the blow, and leaned back with his arms spread like he was taking applause. Blood was filling her nose and throat and she rolled toward the foot of the bed to be face down so she wouldn’t choke on it. This was worse than usual and she didn’t know what to do. Her mind was clouding and it was hard to concentrate. Brecker got back on the bed and rested against the pillows piled near the headboard. It was as if the scene had played itself out and now he was taking a break. His feet didn’t quite reach where she was curled at the bottom of the mattress. His attention turned to the television. He was suddenly tired and bored. It was taking more and more to get the blood rushing like a tidal wave and tonight had been exhausting. He needed a break. The sound of air whistling past broken cartilage and the slight gurgle from the blood in her throat made it hard to hear the news commentator. Annoyed, he found the remote among the covers and pointed it at the television. The helicopter was still circling the house, its spotlight sweeping across the roof and driveway. The crawl along the bottom of the screen gave a brief summary; prominent psychologist murdered, wife being taken into custody. Typical fare, he thought. Except he recognized the name of the murdered man. His eyes went back to the girl at the foot of the bed. He poked her with a toe, which required him to scoot down towards her.

  “Hey. Get up.” She didn’t respond and he poked harder. Nothing. She was out. Brecker could still hear her breathing, so it couldn’t be too bad. He looked back at the television.

  “Shit.”

  Chapter Nine

  The cloth rubbed against her skin like burlap. The floor smelled of urine. Her roommate had tattoos. Merrill was miserable. She huddled in the corner of a shared cell in the Women’s Ward at Los Angeles County Jail. She was already a celebrity, getting more news coverage than your average rapist or murderer. It wasn’t worth much in her current situation. She felt white, whiter than she’d ever noticed being.
It embarrassed her, noticing that the only other woman she’d seen in the jail who wasn’t brown or black also had no teeth. She was more scared of the female detective, Prole, who’d looked at her like she was a piece of gum stuck to her shoe, than she was of the other prisoners – though it was a close call. The word “prisoner” echoed in her head as though she’d said it out loud. She felt the tears start again but she bit her lip hard to stop them. The veins below the tattoo on her roommate’s neck, Sally, had stood out hard against the dark brown skin when Merrill cried before. She’d spit out a few words in Spanish mixed in with some English and Merrill caught “fuckin’ white piece…” and “pussy cryin’ shit” followed by more Spanish interjected with a word starting with “C” that Merrill hadn’t heard spoken out loud since her best friend in junior high school intoned it late one night during a sleepover and told her it was the worst word ever. She’d stopped crying immediately.

  Merrill looked down at her knees, drawn up tight against her chest as she huddled on the floor in the corner of the cell. Part of her noted that the hue of orange didn’t go with anything, either here or in her closet at home. It made her sad, knowing she looked so hideous. No sleep, no makeup, tears streaking her face, and her hair certainly a mess. And it made her giggle for a second, knowing this was stupid and trivial and she was being accused of killing her husband. Killing the man she’d been with for almost twenty years, who’d rescued her in a way she didn’t really understand. Who was the father of their perfect daughter. Sally whipped her head around at the burst of giggle. It didn’t matter what Merrill did; it was all just as likely to lead to a profanity laced tirade and probably eventually a beating. Her husband, dead now. And they were telling her she did it. That she must have done it, who else could have? And they had a knife with her hands all over it and her cringing next to the body. Worse, her explanation was that she didn’t know if she’d killed him. That wasn’t what she said to the police, thank god for Perry Margolin, Carl’s friend even before Merrill had met Carl, and the only one keeping a sane head right now. All that and she still knew her immediate worry should be if Sally would decide to launch her 275 pounds in Merrill’s direction and crush her to death if Merrill sneezed. She didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry, and she didn’t even know what to feel. The loss of Carl was in her gut and it made her shake. It must be love, because she was afraid of life without him. She tried to picture herself standing over him, stabbing him repeatedly while he begged her to stop. She wanted to stop, to let the image evaporate, but she stayed with it. The knife going into his stomach, glancing off a shoulder, entering the soft part of his chest. Then punching a hole in his neck. She felt it in her hands, the speed of the knife moving through the air, the resistance as it hit his body, the pressure as it tried to break the skin and muscle. She listened for his voice, the pleading that replaced the deep, slightly threatening but never angry tone he used when conveying his disappointment in her. Pleading for her to stop, for God’s sake, please Merrill, stop. She listened and she saw. But it didn’t feel right. It was foreign, like a dream. Maybe she’d done it in a haze, a couple glasses of wine or the sleeping pill Carl gave her sometimes. She closed her eyes, squinted hard, pressed her fists against the sides of her head. It hurt to think about, to think about what she may have done. It hurt to think Carl was dead and she was alone. It scared her to think what might happen. Perry hadn’t said anything but she had seen enough television shows. Jail or maybe the death penalty. What would Cheyenne do without her? And that hurt even more. Cheyenne, who was sure her mother had done this, taken away the one thing Cheyenne cared about. The tears started to well up again, silently, unstoppable. Cheyenne. The image of Carl dying on their kitchen floor meant a thousand things, none of which she understood. It was too much. In spite of herself, without realizing it, Merrill dozed off. Sally picked her teeth with a dirty fingernail and wondered whether she should kill the bitch now or later.