Improbable cause

CHAPTER 10

LeAnn Nielsen’s reaction was anything but typical. In all the years I’d been doing next-of-kin notifications, no one had ever laughed before. I waited, unsure of what to do or say, while Alice Fields took LeAnn in her arms and held her in a fiercely protective hug. She was there to backstop LeAnn every step of the way.

Gradually LeAnn’s strange laughter evolved into something different, into something that approximated genuine weeping. At one point I started to say something, but Alice leveled a forbidding look in my direction and gave a slight shake of her head that told me to shut up, take a number, and get in line. I’d talk to LeAnn Nielsen when Alice Fields was damned good and ready and not a moment before.

Eventually LeAnn quieted some. Alice Fields patted her comfortingly. “You don’t have to talk to him if you don’t want to, LeAnn,” Alice said. “Do you understand that? I wanted you to meet him here so you could be officially notified, that’s all.”

LeAnn Nielsen nodded numbly.

“And you don’t have to answer any questions without having an attorney present, is that clear? You might say things that could be held against you later.”

It wasn’t exactly an official reading of LeAnn’s rights, but it was as close as Alice Fields would let me get. If I had tried it, she probably would have packed LeAnn up right then and disappeared with her.

“Why would I need an attorney?” LeAnn asked. Since the question was addressed to Alice Fields, I let her answer it.

“Detective Beaumont told me on the phone that you’re a possible suspect.”

For the first time LeAnn seemed to be aware of my existence. Paling, she turned and looked at me, her brown eyes deep and unsettling. She swallowed hard before she spoke. “Is that true? Am I?” she asked.

I nodded briefly. There was no point in dancing around the issue. Alice Fields wouldn’t have let me get away with that for one minute. “You are a possibility, Mrs. Nielsen. You have to understand, though, it’s still very early in the investigation. We haven’t ruled anyone out yet.”

“A suspect,” she said incredulously, as if saying the word aloud would somehow help her comprehend it. “I had no idea he was dead. How could…” Her voice faded away. She stopped talking and sat looking at her hands. She clenched them tightly and placed them in her lap.

There’s a standard set of questions that relatives usually ask in this kind of situation: How did it happen? When? Where? LeAnn Nielsen asked none of the usual ones. She just sat there, silently staring at her hands. Alice Fields finally broke the long silence.

“What about your children?” she asked, butting in and changing the subject. “Where are they?”

I’m sure Alice Fields got to be executive director of Phoenix House because she was decisive and insightful. She seemed to grasp all the ramifications of what had happened and what would need to be done, but for my money, someone like her is the very last thing a homicide detective needs when he starts to question a suspect.

Alice Fields was the last thing I needed, but there was no way to get rid of her. She was there for the duration.

“I left the kids in a day-care center near the apartment,” LeAnn answered quietly. “I’m supposed to go in this afternoon for a training session at Sea-Tac. I thought it would be good for them to stay at the center all day, to try it out and see how they like it.”

“I’ll call and cancel the training as soon as we finish here,” Alice said firmly. “Then I’ll take you down to pick up the children. You should have someone with you when you tell them.”

LeAnn nodded gratefully, then she turned back to me, but still without asking any questions. The thought crossed my mind that maybe she didn’t have to ask. Maybe she already knew.

“Do you want me to tell you what happened?” I asked.

“Yes.”

I took a deep breath before launching into it. “Your husband died sometime early Saturday afternoon. He wasn’t found until yesterday morning when his receptionist came in to work.”

“That bitch!” LeAnn’s two-word reaction was explosive, instantaneous, and totally at odds with her previously mild appearance.

“Who?” I asked.

“You know who! Debi Rush, that’s who!”

“What about her?”

“She wasn’t just a receptionist,” LeAnn said bitterly.

I put one and two together and came up with a triangle. “You mean she was having an affair with your husband?”

LeAnn nodded. With that gesture, Debi Rush’s uncontrollable grief, the heartbroken sobs we had heard at the crime scene, suddenly made a whole lot more sense. Receptionists don’t necessarily fall apart when their bosses die. When lovers die? That’s a different story.

Alice Fields interrupted again. “LeAnn, I’m not sure you should say anything more without having an attorney present.”

LeAnn’s dark eyes flashed with anger. “Why shouldn’t I tell him? I’ve pretended long enough. Lived a lie long enough. It’s time people knew the truth about Fred. It’s time they heard the real story.”

She dissolved in tears again. This time her whole body shook with wrenching sobs that bore absolutely no resemblance to her earlier eerie laughter. It was several long minutes before she grew quiet again, straightened up, and blew her nose into one of the paper napkins from the table.

She looked directly at me. “What do you want from me?” she asked.

“When did you last see your husband?”

LeAnn drew in a long, shuddering breath, the kind you take when you try to stop crying. Alice Fields reached out and took one of LeAnn’s hands, lifted it to the surface of the table, and held it there. The older woman shook her head in silent warning, but LeAnn ignored it.

“No, it’s all right, Alice. I’ll tell him what he needs to know.” LeAnn turned to me. “I saw him Saturday afternoon.”

“Where?”

“At his office.”

“When?”

“I got there right around one. We had an appointment.“

“What for?”

She sighed. “She told me not to go.”

“Who told you not to go?”

“My counselor from Phoenix House. She didn’t say so in so many words, but we’re not supposed to have any contact with the abuser.”

“And you went anyway.”

“I needed money for my apartment. I’d found a job on Friday, and I needed to get moved in and settled. Fred promised he’d give me the money if I’d just come by and see him. He said he was sorry for what he’d done. He begged me to come.”

“And you agreed?”

“Because I had to have the money,“ she answered. ”I had given the landlord a small deposit, but I had to have the rest of it that afternoon or I’d lose the deposit. I wouldn’t have been able to move in over the weekend.“

“He did give you the money, then,” I continued. “I understand from Mrs. Fields here that you did get moved into your own place.”

If she heard my comment, LeAnn didn’t acknowledge it. She seemed distant. When she spoke, her mind was still locked on the money and her need of it.

“My counselor was right. Fred used the money for bait to get me to come to him. He had it there waiting for me in an envelope on his desk. When I reached for it, he pulled it away from me, pulled it closer to him. He said I’d have to pay to get it.”

“Pay? What do you mean?”

“What do you think I mean?” She dropped her gaze. Her lower lip trembled. In the silence that followed, I could hear the clatter of silverware and the muted conversation of diners in the other room. Alice Fields had been right. The round table did provide some privacy. Some, but not enough.

When LeAnn spoke again, it was in a ragged, painful whisper. “He said being with me made him want me again, turned him on. He said I could have the money if I’d make love to him there in his office, on the couch.”

“LeAnn, you don’t have to do this,” Alice said. “You shouldn’t do this.”

Their hands were still clenched in what seemed like a death grip. Both sets of knuckles were white.

“No,” LeAnn insisted. “I have to tell him what happened. I told Fred no. It was the first time ever. I told him I wasn’t his whore, that he couldn’t pay me enough money to have sex with him.” She paused and then continued. “That’s when he hit me.”

“On your face?”

She nodded, self-consciously touching the angry purple spot below her eye. “He hit me first and then he grabbed my arms and held me against the door. That’s when he told me about her. I didn’t want to listen, I didn’t want to know about it, but he forced me to. I couldn’t get away. He told me how nice it was to have a real woman for a change, one who knew her place and didn’t mind doing things his way.”

“Such as?” I asked.

“Like keeping his office immaculate and falling on her back whenever he snapped his fingers.”

“He told you that?”

“Yes, he told me that,” she hissed. “He wanted to rub my nose in it. He wanted me to understand that it was my problem, not his.“

I felt like I was missing important pieces of the conversation.

“What was his problem?“

“Sex. He wanted me to know that he could get it up with her even if he couldn’t with me.” She paused. “Except…” she added as an afterthought.

“Except what?” I asked.

“Except when he beat me up. He could do it then.”

“Did he?”

She looked at me without flinching. “He tried. He let go of one of my arms to unfasten his pants. That’s when I managed to get away. I grabbed the money and ran.” She stopped.

“Go on,” I urged. “What happened then?”

“There was a man standing right outside the door.”

“A man? Who?”

“A carpet installer. I didn’t know him, didn’t know he was there. He was working in the other room and heard us. He said he heard me scream. Fred must have forgotten about him, too. Anyway, he told Fred to leave me alone, so Fred went after him.”

“Where was this?”

“Out by Debi’s desk. All I could think about was getting away, but I couldn’t get past them.

They were wrestling there in front of the door. I tried going out the back way.“

“Through the garage?”

She nodded. “But the lock had been changed. My key wouldn’t work. Fred came charging into the room. He picked up something by the door, a tool of some kind, and came after me with it. I fell against a flowerpot and knocked it down. Just then the other guy came in. He got between us, and he and Fred struggled. Fred hit him with that tool, that thing in his hand, and he started bleeding. That’s when I hit him.”

“Hit who, Fred?”

“Yes, with a piece of the flowerpot. I remember picking it up with both hands and hitting him over the head with it.”

“Where? On the back of his head? On the side?”

“Here,” she said, pointing to a place just above and behind her left ear.

“And then what happened?”

She shook her head. “I don’t remember.”

“What do you mean?”

“I must have gone back to Phoenix House, but I don’t remember it. Someone told me I had blood all over me…”

Alice Fields had become more and more agitated as LeAnn talked. At last she could restrain herself no longer. “That’s enough, LeAnn!” she ordered. “Don’t say another word. We’re going now, Detective Beaumont. You’re not going to stop us.”

She stood up and glared at me defiantly. She must have thought I’d whip out a pair of handcuffs and arrest LeAnn on the spot. I didn’t.

“I’ll need your address and telephone number,” I said quietly to LeAnn. “Someone will need to come to the medical examiner’s office and make a positive identification.”

LeAnn started to answer me, but Alice Fields stopped her. “No more questions until she has legal counsel with her, Detective Beaumont.”

“Of course,” I said agreeably. I didn’t want to press my luck with the executive director of Phoenix House.

“One of our attorneys will be in touch with you today or tomorrow,” Alice declared firmly. “In the meantime, since you didn’t read LeAnn her rights, I wouldn’t count on using anything she said in a court of law.”

With that, Alice Fields pulled LeAnn bodily to her feet and hustled her out of the room. She left me holding the ticket for both our cinnamon rolls.

LeAnn’s story sounded on first hearing like a case of self-defense. Grabbing whatever weapon happens to be at hand-including a broken flowerpot or a dental pick-and using it to ward off an attacker doesn’t imply premeditation. It’s not in the same class as sitting in a room with a loaded gun in your hand waiting for some poor sucker to walk in the door so you can blow him away.

Besides, I’m opposed to rape, all kinds of rape. Including marital rape. As far as I was concerned, LeAnn Nielsen’s story had played to a pretty sympathetic audience.

For a moment I considered trying to follow them in an effort to find out exactly where LeAnn lived, but that would only have provoked Alice Fields. It might have speeded the process some, to be able to question LeAnn at my convenience instead of at Alice Fields“, but I could afford to wait until LeAnn showed up with her attorney. I hoped he’d be a good one.

About that time Diane came by with a coffeepot and offered a refill. While I waited for it to cool off enough to drink, I scribbled down some notes from what I remembered of LeAnn’s story.

Reading back through it, I could see that most of it rang true. The part about using the money as bait and having LeAnn come over to his office to get it certainly squared with everything else I knew about the late, unlamented Frederick Nielsen.

Abusers are controllers. My years on the force have taught me that much. They want the people in their lives to dance to their tune like puppets on strings. They want to call the shots, all of them. If he was true to type, Nielsen would have wanted LeAnn to grovel for the money, preferably to crawl around on her hands and knees and beg for it. Barring that, if that hadn’t humiliated her enough, then forcibly taking what he regarded as his personal property and throwing Debi Rush in LeAnn’s face should have done the trick.

But it hadn’t worked. LeAnn hadn’t knuckled under. She had caught a little of Alice Fields’ contagious spunk during her stay at Phoenix House. She had fought her husband every step of the way, taken her money, and run.

And that’s when Larry Martin showed up to save the day. Of course, I’d have to get Martin to corroborate LeAnn’s story, but that seemed simple enough. It sounded like justifiable homicide to me.

Just then, though, the tiniest corner of doubt crept into my mind. I’ve been a cop too long. I’m becoming a cynic in my old age. Why had the story ended with the flowerpot? Had Alice Fields ended the narrative then, or had LeAnn broken off of her own accord, stopping just short of telling me about the dental pick? I couldn’t remember.

Doubts are meant to be resolved. My job is to prove things beyond a shadow of a doubt. So I went over the whole interview again in my mind. While the coffee grew stale in my cup, LeAnn’s story began to sour in my mind.

Had it really happened that way? Was it mere chance that Larry Martin had been there just when LeAnn needed help, or was there some other connection between Larry Martin and LeAnn Nielsen that I didn’t know about? And what about LeAnn’s reaction to the news of her husband’s death? Had she heard it from me first? If so, why the laughter? Relief, grief, shock? It could have been any of those things. Or none of them.

If LeAnn had known about Frederick“ s death since Saturday, if she had been there when he died, maybe she was laughing with relief because she no longer had to carry the secret around alone. Or maybe she was really happy that Nielsen was dead, that he would never be able to beat her up again.

I tried to fathom what LeAnn Nielsen was feeling. I know what it’s like to lose someone you love. That hurts. It hurts like hell, but it’s simple. This was more complex. LeAnn had both loved and hated her husband, feared him and yet gone to him for help when she needed it. No wonder she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

“Are you Detective Beaumont?” A sharp voice penetrated my reverie.

“Yes.” I answered with a start.

The woman who had shown me to the table was speaking to me. “There’s a call for you. Somebody named Al. Says he needs to talk to you right away. The phone’s down by the cash register.”

I hurried back down the stairway. A red wall phone with the receiver swinging loose was between the end of the counter and the huge table where yet another steaming tray of cinnamon rolls was coming out of the oven. A clock on the wall over the oven said five after ten.

When I picked up the dangling receiver it was covered with a thick coating of flour. “I thought you’d be in court by now,” I said to Al.

“Now they say eleven.” he replied. “It looks like I’m going to squander the whole damn day locked up here in the office. Did the wife show? I hope I’m not interrupting something important.”

“She showed all right, but she’s gone. What’s up?”

“I just took a call from one of the LOLs, the one who ditched us.”

“You mean Rachel?”

“Yeah, her. I couldn’t remember her name.

It musta been a mental block. She called to say that her sister’s at home now. We’re welcome to come by and talk to her sometime today.“

“Al, you’re shitting me. You’re bored, so you made up this story to see what I’d say, right? Why would she ditch us one day and invite us to drop by for a visit the next?”

“I swear to God, I didn’t make this up, but I thought I’d tell you so you could go right over there from where you are. Figured it would save you some time.”

“Like hell you did,” I retorted. “You’re telling me now so I’ll go there while you’re still stuck on a short leash with the prosecutor’s office, while you aren’t in any danger of going yourself. Did that parrot bother you that much, or was it-the LOLs?“

There was no answer from Big Al’s end of the line. I had him dead to rights.

“Rachel said it would be better if we talked to Dorothy this morning. She’s just out of the hospital and evidently used to sleeping some in the afternoons.”

The lady from the cash register came over and pointed to a three-by-five card taped above the phone. On it was a typed message that read,

This is a business phone. Please do not tie it up with personal calls.

“I’ve got to get off the line here,” I said. “I’ll head on up to their apartment as soon as I can.

By the way, if you get a chance, call the medical examiner’s office and find out if there was a bruise behind Frederick Nielsen’s left ear.“

“Right,” Al said. “Will do.”

I hung up the phone and went back to my table. Diane came by and offered me one last cup of coffee, which I reluctantly refused. The bill for two coffees and two rolls was something less than five dollars. I left a ten on the table.

If Diane was just out of Phoenix House and struggling to get back on her feet, I figured she needed a big tip way more than I needed an extra five-dollar bill in my wallet.

It wasn’t charity, either. She had earned it.