A Woman’s Eye

KILL THE MAN FOR ME by Mary Wings

MARY WINGS’s amateur detective Emma Victor has solved two cases to date-She Came Too Late and She Came in a Flash, novels that have been published in England, Japan, Spain, Germany, and Holland as well as in the United States. After living in the Netherlands for seven years, Ms, Wings moved to San Francisco where she now works as a graphic designer.

“It was okay,” you said after the first time we’d made love. You said it very neutrally as if you’d been talking about the weather. Or snowflakes. Or cornflakes. “It was okay.” “Nobody’s ever told me that before,” I joked. You were lying next to me saying, “It’s no big deal. No big deal to say, ‘It’s okay.’”

You leaned up on your elbow. I traced your collarbone with my eyes. You tried tracing my eyes with your eyes.

“It’s our first time,” you said, “We need to learn some more things about each other.” Your voice was warm, instructive. Of course, you’d been in practice a long time. Or so they had said.

“Sure!” I crowed. “Learn some more things. Discourse about intercourse! Sex as perception,” I burbled at you. “Sure!” But I also knew that you were telling me that we had a future. I laughed in the darkness. I would get what I wanted. And I would get you.

Later I would tell you that when I made love with you, the memories of former lovers abandoned all claim upon my body. I told you I was free.

We curled up together and fell asleep. The next day we would be stuck in gridlock traffic for three hours. On the way home.

I joined in the sighs of relief when you spoke at public gatherings. You’d summarize, make the contradictions manageable. We’d been anxious. You’d satisfy us. One of them came to a lecture once. But it wasn’t a problem. You were attentive to me at these gatherings. You’d ruffle my hair. I was a portrait by your side. You’d let me know with the slightest of gestures at the end of a publicly spoken phrase that you were, in fact, only speaking to me. Of course, all you told anyone was what they wanted to hear. Pure pap.

Except this morning when you said, after we’d come out of the shower, “Don’t you ever comb your hair?”

And then I remembered, that’s what you used to tell them.

You were laughing, “What did your parents ever do to you?” You were hardly exasperated at all. And I’d spilled the garbage bag on the floor for the third time that week. I was on the floor too.

I was watching Jackson the terrier make pesto sauce paw prints the color of avocado. She was making them on the rug of desert tan. I was crying. And I was tan. We were all tan. We lived in Los Angeles.

“What did your parents ever do to you?” you repeated. But you knew better than I did what my parents had done to me. You’d been my shrink. You’d been theirs too.

You’d never thought about advertising. Not that I’d ever suggest it. But I’d asked Mr. Geramus, the neighbor to the north of us, for tennis doubles. Then he asked you to join the agency. I knew he would.

It was autumn and you said your soul had been searched. You said yes. But later you didn’t seem too happy to me.

And the first time you did it you felt really bad. It was the loss of control. You were so devastated it was easy to want to comfort you. And eventually you let me.

Later you didn’t even comment when I spent extra time at the mirror powdering my bruise.

They had bought me oil-based foundation. It’s better because it doesn’t run with the sweat, they told me. And always follow up with matte powder.

Then it was Christmastime and the agency had fired you right before having to give you your Christmas bonus. Your old shrink circle had laughed when you said you were going into advertising. Marketing, you’d called it. They’d envied your salary, and now they were triumphing over your unemployment.

Yes, your old shrink circle had shrunk, but we were going to one of those parties anyway.

Mrs. Watkin, the neighbor to the south of us, peered out her window as we walked down the driveway in our festive holiday attire. You always opened the door for me, and this time you had to. And we always wore our safety belts,

We floated in with a liquor delivery. If I was very quiet it was because my arm hurt. But it was one more bond between us. It was our private story about how you’d lost control and I’d given it back to you by forgiving you.

As the people floated by, faces talked about auto insurance, termites, weekend resort prices. Those subjects would latch on to other topics and become health care, roach motels, and freeway ramps. But you knew and I knew that you’d come damned close to breaking my arm last night. The throbbing and swelling of that arm filled up the whole room for me; the pain devoured hours of small talk generated by holiday anxieties and large quantities of hard liquor.

And I knew that next time I’d make enough noise, near a south window, that the neighbor would call the cops.

Patrol Officer Laura Deleuse:

The call was a 418-DV on Del Mar Drive. Domestic violence. In a neighborhood that is usually just domestic.

All assaults used to be lumped together as 418s, now we sort out the DVs. Makes it easier for the people at the university to study the statistics. These calls are never my favorites. The worst are the “hold me back” couples. When you arrive on the scene, they really go out of control. Because they know that now that you’re there, nothing really bad is going to happen.

But, of course, this wasn’t the story with these folks. We pulled up to Malibu lighting, alarm systems, and bleached oak designer fencing. Of course, the husband with the big excuse opened the door. The sobbing wife would be in the background somewhere. This would take application of social skills. I thought I’d done all that on my dinner date last night.

I explained that a neighbor phoned, complaining about noise. I asked him the usual questions: “What’s happened here?” “Has there been an accident?” “Is someone hurt?” (That scared him.)

He mumbled some polite denials.

“Who else is at home? Where’s your wife? May I see her, please?”

He invited us in, opening the door too quickly, too widely, as if to say, “What do you think this is, a torture chamber?”

What it was was a sea of chintz upholstery and a woman with a cut above her eye sinking into it. She had long hair and short legs. Her hair was pulled up in a complicated chignon (not a hair-pulling fight, apparently) and her feet were curled up underneath her. A fresh fire crackled on the grate of a marble fireplace.

I squinted my eyes, looking at that cut, but when her husband glanced at her she turned her face away. The skin is so delicate there, I thought, if you get hit, your cheekbone can actually cause a tear in the skin. I looked over at my partner Kevin. His eyes were roaming the room; there were no weapons or anything that could be construed as a weapon lying around. But these days a fist is enough to cause corporal injury and can be regarded as a weapon in court.

“What can I do for you?” she asked, and as I approached she uncurled her legs and bent over to poke at the fire, which was beginning to smolder. She fumbled with the iron, the only sign of nervousness.

She was wearing stockings without a snag or run. She kept her face averted from me, although she had given me a good enough look when I’d first come in. But other than that she didn’t act like your usual humiliated upper-middle-class victim.

What a difference from the scene I’d visited last week. Basically a couple trying to tear each other to shreds. The technique of separating them and defusing the fight wouldn’t be necessary here. When that couple made eye contact, it set them to spitting-spitting!-at each other.

This woman, in her stocking feet, poking at the fire, with the husband nervously shifting his weight from side to side, was a different setup altogether. But the reason I was there was that phone call, and the cut above her eye. As in all these cases, I had to get her alone.

“I’d like to ask you a few questions; could we speak privately?”

She nodded and slipped on her black pumps, which were neatly paired by the skirt of the sofa. She led me down a hallway into a phony English library setup, with leather books and leather furniture. We settled into wing chairs, but I didn’t want to be too comfortable. I didn’t want her to be too comfortable either.

“I assume there’s some sort of injury here.” I pointed with my pencil to the cut beneath her eye.

“You assume correctly, I fell down the stairs.” Her tone was too measured, I thought; this woman was too smart not to know that that is the cliché. She was almost throwing it in my face.

“I’ve never seen an eye cut like that from a fall down stairs, ma’am, A blow to the face is usually what causes this sort of thing.” I could hear irritation in my voice. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure.”

I sighed. What a waste of my time and the taxpayers’ money. And the laws have changed in California too. Used to be they’d have to press charges. Hire a lawyer. Still hubby would get out the same night. Now all we have to do is get her to admit that he hit her and we can cool his heels in jail, at least overnight, until he can get before a judge. But this woman wasn’t going to help herself out.

“You sure about that? If you can just confirm that he hit you-that’s all you have to do-”

“He didn’t.”

“And the bruise on your arm?”

She looked down and moved the skin on her upper arm around to see a purple spot. She looked surprised. She hadn’t noticed it. So maybe she just wasn’t even feeling pain.

“Must have happened on the stairs.”

“Looks a few days old.”

She shrugged.

I shrugged. “That’s all, I guess.”

Later I thought, maybe if my social skills had been better I could have charmed the words out of her. But now I was getting hungry. Kevin and I were helping each other out with our diets. I wondered who would try and talk whom out of the late-night salad bar this time.

We stood up and walked back into the living room. She had her head tilted up high, but not with the pride of the humiliated or the pain of a broken jaw, I liked the tilt of her head and something else, some strength I couldn’t place. Or maybe she was just crazy.

I watched her eyes settle upon her husband as we walked into the room, and saw how much space she chose to put between them. She’s not afraid of him, I thought. Maybe she did fall down the stairs, It didn’t matter anymore.

Kevin had a crush on the hamburger joint waitress with great repartee and I was dating a paramedic with awesome social skills. That’s the way it was with night work. Your society becomes waitresses at all-night restaurants, nurses, lap dancers, paramedics, and criminals. Couples with Malibu lighting were the exception.

Kevin and I made our polite good-byes and went back to the car to call in and write up a report.

“My feeling is, we won’t have to go back there again tonight.”

“I’ve never seen a DV so calm after the storm.”

“If everybody’s so copacetic, what can you do? I’ll bet that guy doesn’t ever have to be up before the judge.”

But what I was thinking was, I hope he doesn’t cut her up into little tiny pieces either.

We settled on hamburgers and drove to a neon-lighted, late-night part of town.

They were right. Things got much easier after that. It became so simple to fuck up. I not only burned your shirts when I ironed them, I developed a cowering posture, lowering my eyes that darted only over to your shoe soles. And I knew that as things became worse for you, as the pressure started to mount, you’d beat me.

But you were dependent upon me. I was the only thing you could control in your life. Or so you thought. You had no idea how out of control you really were!

I went to several doctors, under assumed names, but I never wore sunglasses. I looked them straight in the face. And I introduced memorable topics with the receptionist at every appointment.

Of course, I had to show some kind of escalation. But I wasn’t about to rent slasher films for your at-home video entertainment (besides, I was afraid the video places would have receipts). But I didn’t know how to time it. It was like taking a wishbone and pulling on it, hoping that it would break in the right place. The place that would be in my favor. And that’s what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to get broken anymore.

But I didn’t know then how easy it would be, once I’d remembered what they’d told me.

When I showed them the photos (probably not admissible in court, but nevertheless interesting), it was emotionally upsetting for them. To see the photos. The pictures traced bruises with bilious yellow centers that blossomed into purple and black. Or red welts, like bars across my back. It brought back memories that were not pleasant for them. And they expressed sympathy for me. They encouraged me to finish the work soon.

I knew I would get all the elements right. It was Christmas again (I’d disconnected the heater in your car) and you were worried about losing the rather menial lectureship that you had finally landed. After you arrived, with nearly frostbitten fingers (I’d hidden your gloves), I arranged for my cousin to stop by, blow marijuana smoke in your face, shout loudly at you some story about a sports victory, and slap you on the back.

We were having a dinner party (read potential job prospect) and I lied to you about the arrival time of our guests. So you were caught off guard when they came half an hour early. I managed to bum the roast anyway.

Later I made insipid comments and quite frequently had no opinion at all (although four times I managed to contradict you over matters at hand: the brand of the oven, the age of Alexander Dubcek, and the cost of pouring a cement patio last summer). You bickered with me publicly until you remembered where you were and with whom. You were hating me really good by the time your no-longer-potential employer left.

Patrol Officer Laura Deleuse:

It’s easier to take on a violation of a restraining order. These women don’t want to be hassled and have made their demand public record. They don’t cover up for someone that’s causing them corporal injury.

I put personal interest in carrying out violation of restraining orders. One particular weasel was calling a woman twenty times a day at her work. Her boss had sympathy for her, but after a few months it was getting seriously in the way of business. What could he do? She was going to lose her job.

I got to know her, going over there and taking reports quite often. She had a daughter and two kittens. Two kittens! She was just trying to raise her kid, a working mom, and here was some jerk ruining her life. Hanging on her doorbell. Standing outside her window at night. And the stupid bastard had his timing down right. She’d call the station, but he never lingered more than three or four minutes after she’d noticed him. We can’t make it in less than five minutes and he knew it. He was always gone before we made the scene.

So who hasn’t known somebody pretty unstable, even gotten involved with them? You only really find out when you try and pull away. There’s not too much you can do. Get a restraining order.

But if somebody wants to harass you, make your life miserable, if that somebody is making that his career, even with bodyguards there’s not much to be done. But a restraining order is the only way to start.

That’s why I really wanted to get this particular weasel. She called and said he was calling her from a pay phone. He said that he was watching her, that he could see her from where he was. In between calls she reached the dispatch unit, and I just drove up to that lighted booth, recognized him from a mug shot, threw him on the hood, cuffed him up, and case closed.

This particular woman had great documentation; that’s what I tell them all. Write it down: where it happened, when, what was said, how many times he rang the doorbell, whatever. Few think to do that. First of all you don’t want to believe that this person in your life has turned out to be crazy. Then you just want them to go away. It doesn’t inspire you to play secretary.

So when the 418-DV at Del Mar Drive came up again, I wasn’t happy. I was going to get the cold shoulder and the short stockinged legs all over again. But I didn’t have any choice after the anonymous tip from the neighbor had been received.

After the first visit, such types would usually learn to keep their voices to a provocative growl. But this growl had had quite different consequences.

We walked up the Malibu-lighted path. I rang the bell. This time it wasn’t the husband with the big excuse. It was the wife with a little gun.

It hung off her hand like ripe fruit. The elegant chignon had come apart, and hair was falling off her shoulders, pointing in all directions; a ratty knot was caught behind her left ear. Her stocking had been ripped; on one leg it hung nearly down to her ankle, beige cobwebs covering her foot.

She didn’t turn her head to avoid my glance this time. Her face told of a pummeling that was physically painful to see. And the front of her blouse. I took the gun from her; it was easy-it just fell into my hand.

An acrid whiff of gunpowder was in the air, and we ran into the house. We ran past the chintz L-shaped sofa, past the library (a wing chair was overturned), and into the kitchen. We looked down the stairs. He was lying at the bottom.

I ran down to check his pulse, stepping around a pool of sticky blood surrounding his big back. A knife lay close by his side, a large German meat knife.

Even without a pulse (excluding gray matter, or maggot face as even the coroner calls it, and oh, yes, decapitation) we can’t make a death call. Even paramedics can’t pronounce a 187, death on the scene, without pretty obvious physical decomposition. This guy was going to get an ambulance like every other dead citizen,

I wondered which paramedic would be on duty tonight. Dinner dates had stopped because my social skills apparently weren’t up to snuff (meaning her friends didn’t like me). I didn’t like to think her elitism was so compelling. The payoff was still some great compliments I’d garnered.

I went back upstairs and started cuffing our suspect. She was compliant, but I was still glad when it was over and I didn’t have to sort of hold hands with her. She was talking the whole time too. “He pushed me down the stairs,” she was saying. “He threatened me. I had the gun. He laughed. He said I didn’t have the nerve. And he came closer and closer.”

Kevin wasn’t asking her any questions, and spontaneous statements are admissible in court. Didn’t sound like she was incriminating herself in any event. I sat her down and recited Miranda to her anyway. Self-defense would be the case made for her, no doubt. I wondered when the court date would come up and how sleepy I’d be, having to get up in the middle of the day. I remembered the details of my first visit to Del Mar Drive. I remembered how my social skills were never up to snuff. I didn’t feel good about seeing her months earlier, immune to pain, denying that anything had happened to her. So maybe this was the natural consequence, but why did I have to see it, on my beat, tonight? I could just guess which paramedic would be showing up too.

I called the supervisor on the radio; the sergeant would make notifications. The on-call homicide inspector and the on-call photographer would come, and I’d go to the hospital with her, for a quick checkup before she got booked on the sixth floor of the Hall of Justice.

After I’d shot you (it was so easy-you came after me like Attila the Hun, rattling your saber, roaring epithets), I felt so relieved. It was simple to pull that trigger. I aimed for your heart, but I think I ended up shooting you in the head. Your body actually fell on me (I’d run to the bottom of the stairs, “away from you” as I’d explain later). So there you were, staining my silk blouse with your blood and gray matter, pinning me to the floor.

I pushed you off me, keeping hold of the gun. I waited a few minutes, standing over you, looking at your back, not believing that I wouldn’t have to follow your orders anymore, not believing you were actually dead, and knowing that this sort of shock response would be the most believable to the police. Later they’d take me to the hospital (I think I had a broken rib) and then to the sixth floor of the Hall of Justice (I’d done my homework; I knew just what would happen to me).

I would explain to them how the fight started in your study. I would say that I grabbed the gun there, but actually I had already gotten it that afternoon. I wasn’t going to take any chances when I finally had you ready with rage.

But the story began almost a year ago, my dear. When you, the doctor, at my most vulnerable and trusting moment (I had thought I was losing my mind), had sat next to me on the couch and caressed me, talking to me about trust and transference!

Since you were my only reality check at the time, I was pretty disconcerted. I ran out of your office. After a few days I decided that my reality check deserved to be researched.

It was only later that I decided on revenge.

Public records revealed that you had been arrested once on charges of assaulting a woman you were living with; but she dropped charges. I remembered the name of the building receptionist who had left shortly after I started treatment. She was somewhat bitter over sexual misconduct on your part and mentioned that you had gone out with one of your former patients. I got her name and called her.

And then there was your first wife, a woman perhaps even angrier than I was. You’d never abused your doctor-client privilege with her, but I found out after interviewing her personally that she had suffered mental and physical torment before getting out of the marriage with no alimony and the minimum of child support. You were late with the checks too. She didn’t know about the distraught ex-client who had you arrested but later dropped charges. But she did know about the whole life insurance policy you’d taken out at thirty, when your practice was booming, when you were making five, even pushing six digits a year. And I knew that an insurance policy more than two years old was incontestable to the beneficiaries, which at the moment included your son. And could include a new wife.

As we talked it over, your former wife and I, we decided to call your other former patient. The one who had suffered the broken jaw and the cracked ribs when she suggested she’d turn you in to the Board of Medical Quality Assurance. And that’s when we all agreed. We weren’t going to turn you in. We were going to turn you over.

Patrol Officer Laura Deleuse:

I hate going to court. I hate standing up in front of people. And I hated remembering that night.

I had to sit through a bunch of testimony for the defense before my turn came up. Seems the guy had beaten up a woman who was an ex-client, and there was an ex-wife who had some gruesome stories. Locked her in a closet while he beat the kid. Public humiliation, rape, we got to hear it all. And a chorus line of doctors attesting to the multifarious wounds of the defendant. It didn’t make me want to get up and go to work the next day either.

So it was open and shut. With him coming down the stairs at her like that, imminence wasn’t even a remote improbability. But that’s not why I didn’t want to remember that night. It was the paramedic who strolled up the driveway, hung out waiting for the photographer, and pretty much ignored me, walking right past me like I was a tree. I got her out of earshot, when she was busy inspecting her manicure, and said, “Hi, remember me? The one you had an affair with last week.”

“Yeah.” She looked up, and some kind of recognition played across her face. “Oh yeah,” she said. “I was there.”

Sometimes her social skills weren’t too good either.

Do I have any regrets? No. Well, maybe only one. I was a bit hasty in organizing our victory lunch. Lee, your ex-wife, was there, and Rachel, the girl friend (she’s not only going to get her jaw fixed, she’s going for a facelift, and a Ph.D. in media studies). Lee and I always wanted to learn Italian, so we’ll buy a villa on Capri (we chose one already, through an estate agent). You see, what we didn’t count on was that “accidental death” clause that includes self-defense and awards a double policy. We’ve well endowed every charity that remotely tugged on our heartstrings.

I was a bit worried about being hasty with the luncheon. After all, we were supposed to have set eyes on each other only in court. And there we were, chatting away like old friends (after all, they’d seen me through bruises, and beatings, fixed me up-and sent me back). We were drinking champagne, high on the knowledge of total financial security for life, jubilant that we’d done it ourselves (we’d never had a conflict about the split either) when I saw her. That police officer, She was behind a pillar, lunching, in fact, with the sour-faced paramedic that had scooped up the gray matter around your head. I did something I’d never done before. I looked her straight in the eye and raised my champagne glass to her. She spotted me and her eyes swept with mounting recognition across the faces of my luncheon companions. I saw her process the whole thing; she seemed to freeze. But then slowly she turned her back (the whole time I was thinking about my research, double indemnity, double jeopardy, and insurance companies that are not mandated to recollect), and as she turned around I saw what was in her hand. A champagne glass, and she raised it toward me.