Goldilocks

6

The last time I’d spoken to Betty was in January, when I’d threatened her with a partition sale, and she’d told me to go ahead and sue, Charlie. She was rather more cordial now as she ushered me into the huge house she had once shared with Jamie. I knew her, of course, I had run into her at cocktail parties here and there around town; it was impossible to live in a place like Calusa without meeting everyone sooner or later. She was wearing a gray tailored pants suit, a brandy-colored blouse showing in the V of the jacket opening. Her black hair was cropped close to her head in a shingle bob. Her eyes were a deep brown. She was not an unattractive woman, but there was a tight, pinched look to her face, and it communicated an anger that seemed volatile and dangerous. She walked with a stiff, unwomanly gait — I recalled abruptly that Jamie had described her as frigid for the first thirteen years of their marriage. On the deck, she offered me a chair, and then took a chair opposite me. Beyond, the ocean crashed in against a mile-long stretch of white sand beach. The house and the grounds had been part of the divorce settlement. The rest, according to Jamie, had been two hundred thousand dollars in cash, and thirty thousand a year in alimony.

She offered me a drink. I declined; it was still only eleven-thirty in the morning. She asked if I would care for some coffee. Some iced tea? Again, I declined. Then, without preamble, she said, “I want to know what Jamie told the police.”

“About what?”

“About me.”

“Only that you were once married.”

“Then why did they come here asking questions? Did Jamie tell them I might have had something to do with the murders?”

“No, he did not.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“You should have expected the police,” I said. “A visit to a former wife would seem routine in a case—”

“No, it wasn’t routine, don’t tell me it was routine,” she said sharply, and rose abruptly and began pacing.

“Betty,” I said, “on the phone, you told me you wanted to talk to Jamie’s attorney. Okay. I’m here. I’ve already told you that Jamie didn’t even hint—”

“Then why do they think I might have done it?”

“Did they say they thought so?”

“They wanted to know where I was last night.”

“What’d you tell them?”

“I told them I was here.”

“Then what are you worried about?”

“They wanted to know if anyone was with me. I told them no one was with me, I was here alone watching television. I’m a woman without a husband, I’m forty-two years old, where the hell did they think I’d be on a Sunday night?”

“Betty, I still don’t understand why—”

“Don’t you? They wanted to know what television shows I’d been watching, whether I’d made any phone calls or received any, what time I went to bed. What does that sound like to you?”

“Routine questioning. If you’d in fact talked to anyone on the phone—”

“I didn’t talk to a goddamn soul all night,” she said. “My phone doesn’t ring too often these days.” The eyes were tighter now, the mouth thin. “I’m a woman alone in a town full of divorcées and widows. When a man can find himself a twenty-year-old in a bar or on a beach, he’s not too inclined...”

“What I’m saying—”

“What you’re saying is that a telephone call would have substantiated my alibi, isn’t that what you’re saying?”

“You used the word, Betty, not me.”

“I don’t need an alibi, I didn’t kill that bitch.”

“I’m sure you told that to the police.”

“Yes, I told them. But I saw them ringing doorbells after they left here. One of my neighbors phoned later to say they’d asked her whether she’d seen any lights on in the house last night, whether the car was in the garage—”

“Were there any lights on?”

“Only in the television den, on the beach side. No one on the street side could have seen them. And the garage door was closed, none of my neighbors would have had any way of knowing whether I was home or not.”

“But you were home. You just told me...”

“Yes, I was home.”

“Then what are you worried about, Betty?”

“I don’t want to get involved in this. I’ve got a reputation to protect in this town, it isn’t easy for a woman alone. My life is difficult enough as it is, Jamie robbed me of my dignity, and my pride, and now he’s... with his, with his big mouth he’s suggesting—”

“He’s suggesting no such thing. I was with him during the police interrogation. Not once did he cast the slightest... look, Betty, what the hell do you want?”

“I’ll tell you what I don’t want. I don’t want anyone coming around here again asking me questions about where I was, treating me like a common criminal, just because Jamie—”

“Jamie said nothing to—”

“You give him a message for me, okay? You tell him that if I hear he’s so much as breathed a word to anyone — and I mean anyone — about a possible connection between me and those murders, I’ll sue him for slander before he can bat an eyelash. You go tell him that.”

“Is that why you asked me to come here?”

“Yes. You’re his attorney. He should be warned. I don’t want anyone snooping into my private life. He embarrassed me enough when he... when he flaunted his goddamn affair to the whole town, started living with Goldilocks even before we’d reached a settlement, eighteen months, the son of a bitch, living with her in that little love nest on Stone Crab. You tell him what I said, Matt. You warn him—”

“I’ll warn him, but I hardly think a warning is necessary.”

“Tell him what I said.”

“I will.”

“And tell him something else.”

Her back was to the ocean, the sun hung almost at its zenith, illuminating the sand and the water with a harsh flat glare. Her eyes met mine.

“Tell him I’m glad they’re dead.”

“I don’t think you want me to tell him that, Betty.”

“Tell him,” she said. “Tell the rotten bastard.”

I wasn’t surprised that Ehrenberg had been to see her. I knew very little about the man as yet, but I suspected he would take nothing for granted in this case — not Jamie’s alibi, nor the whereabouts of his former wife on the night of the murders. I felt certain that it would only be a matter of time before he learned all about Jamie’s hurried departure from the poker game and his subsequent assignation with Catherine Brenet. I felt certain, too, that he would not accept Betty’s alibi on her word alone. If no one had seen lights in the house, if no one could say positively that Betty had indeed been home last night, then she could have been anywhere. And anywhere might have been Jacaranda Drive, where Maureen and the children were being killed.

I thought about this all the way back to the office. The murders had been committed in apparent rage, and if there was one thing Betty Purchase had in abundance, it was anger. I wondered if I should call Ehrenberg to repeat what she’d said just before I’d left the house — “Tell him I’m glad they’re dead.” I didn’t have to call him. When I got to the office, Cynthia told me he himself had phoned not five minutes earlier to report that Jamie’s son Michael had confessed to the murders.

In Calusa, the police station is officially called the Public Safety Building, and these words are lettered in white on the low wall outside. Less conspicuously lettered to the right on the brown metal entrance doors, and partially obscured by Pittosporum bushes, are the words Police Department. The building is constructed of varying shades of tan brick and its architecturally severe face is broken only by narrow windows resembling rifle slits in an armory wall. This is not unusual for Calusa, where the summer months are torrid and large windows produce only heat and glare. I entered the building, and walked directly to what was obviously a reception desk. One of the girls there told me I could find Detective Ehrenberg and Dr. Purchase on the third floor, and then buzzed Ehrenberg to let him know I was on the way. He and Jamie were waiting for me when I stepped off the elevator into the corridor. Ehrenberg looked sympathetic and grave, and he said at once, “I’ve already told Dr. Purchase how sorry I am about this.”

“I’d like to talk to Michael,” I said. “Alone, Jamie.”

“That’s usually best,” Ehrenberg said, and nodded reassuringly. I did not for a moment doubt that the arrest of twenty-year-old Michael Purchase had upset him. He seemed to be a man who could not easily hide his feelings or pretend to feelings that weren’t genuine. He was disturbed by the turn of the events, and it showed on his face and in the slump of his shoulders. His hands were in his pockets. He seemed almost ashamed of the fact that we were here on a bright sunny afternoon to examine the bloody deeds of a midnight just passed.

“All right,” Jamie said, “but, please, I want to see him before—”

“You can talk to him before we question him,” Ehrenberg said. “But then it’ll have to be just his attorney present, if he wants one.”

“I may have to call in a criminal lawyer,” I said.

“If that’s what the boy wants, fine.”

“Have you talked to him yet?”

“Why, no, sir,” Ehrenberg said. He looked suddenly injured.

“You said he’d confessed to the murders...”

“Yes, but that was to the arresting officer. That was still a field investigation, the officer wasn’t required to read him Miranda-Escobedo. We advised him of his rights the minute he was in custody here at this facility. He said he wanted us to call his father, and we finally reached Dr. Purchase at your office.”

“All right,” I said, “let me talk to him, please.”

He had walked us into a large reception area dominated by an orange letter-elevator that rose like an oversize periscope from the floor diagonally opposite the entrance doors. There was a desk against the paneled wall facing us, and a girl sat behind it, typing furiously. The clock on the wall above her head read twelve-fifteen.

“He’s in the captain’s office,” Ehrenberg said. “If you’ll have a seat on the bench here, Dr. Purchase, I’ll find somebody to bring you a cup of coffee.” He indicated the bench, and then led me past an American flag in a floor stand, to where another pair of doors stood at right angles to each other in a small alcove. He opened the door on our left, and I went into the room. The door clicked shut behind me.

At first I thought the office was empty. There was a desk on the wall opposite, a green leatherette swivel chair behind it. On the paneled wall above the desk, several framed diplomas. Bookshelves behind the desk, a hookah pipe on the top shelf. Framed photos of women I guessed were the captain’s wife and daughters. From the corner of my eye, I saw Michael Purchase sitting in a chair to the right of the door, and walked to him at once.

His elbows were resting on his thighs, his hands were clenched forward of his knees, his head was bent, almost level with the polished top of the captain’s desk. He did not look up as I approached. His eyes remained focused instead on the desk top, where half a dozen Polaroid pictures of a black girl were spread in a row that resembled a lineup of sextuplets. Michael was wearing blood-stained blue jeans and a blood-stained white T-shirt. His sandals were caked with what seemed to be a mixture of dried blood and sand. There was sand in his matted black hair, blood on his cheek, blood caked in the curve of his ear.

“Michael,” I said.

He looked up at me, brown eyes wide in his narrow face, and nodded bleakly, and then went back to studying the pictures of the black girl. I could not believe he was really seeing them. I felt only that he chose not to meet my eyes.

“I have some questions for you, Michael.”

He nodded again.

“Did you kill Maureen and your sisters?”

He nodded.

“Michael, I want you to speak, please. I want you to answer yes or no. Did you kill Maureen?”

“Yes,” he said. His voice was hoarse. He cleared his throat “Yes,” he said again.

“And the girls?”

“Yes.”

“Who’d you tell this to?”

“The cop.”

“Which cop?”

“The one who arrested me.”

“Where was this?”

“Sabal Beach.”

“What time?”

“About ten? I’m not sure. I haven’t got a watch.”

“Is he the only one you told it to?”

“Yes.”

“Michael,” I said, “I want to get a criminal lawyer for you. I’m not equipped to handle something like this myself, I want to call in someone who is. The best criminal lawyer in town is probably Benny Freid, I want to call him, I want to get him in here immediately.”

“No,” Michael said, and shook his head.

“I’m advising you as your attorney—”

“You’re not my attorney, nobody asked for you. I don’t need you, and I don’t need a criminal lawyer, either. I killed them.”

“In this state, the penalty for first-degree murder is—”

“Fine, let them—”

“The electric chair.”

“Fine.”

“Michael, they’re going to start questioning you in just a little while. I want to call Benny before then. He’s a friend of mine, I feel reasonably sure he’ll—”

“I don’t want him. Don’t call him because I don’t want him.”

“What exactly did you say to the patrolman who arrested you?”

“I don’t remember.”

“Did you say you’d killed somebody?”

“Yes.”

“Did you say who you’d killed? Did you say you’d killed Maureen Purchase and Emily Purchase and Eve Purchase?”

“No, I didn’t say that.”

“What did you say exactly, can you remember?”

“I said I did it.”

“Did what?”

“Killed them.”

“Were those your exact words? Did you say ‘I did it, I killed them’?”

“What difference does it make?” he shouted, and rose suddenly. “I did it, I did it, what more do you want?”

“I want to know what you told that patrolman.”

“He came on me in the woods, okay? I was sleeping in the woods.”

“What woods?”

“Off Sabal Shores. The pine forest going down to the beach. North Sabal.”

“Near your father’s house?”

“Yes. You walk to the end of Jacaranda, and then you climb over the chain across the driveway on West Lane, and you’re in the pine forest. I was sleeping there when he found me.”

“He woke you up?”

“Yes.”

“And you say this was about ten o’clock?”

“I told you I don’t have a watch, I don’t know what time it was.”

“All right, he woke you up. What’d he say?”

“He wanted to know what I was doing there. I told him I was sleeping.”

“Then what?”

“He asked me did I have any identification. I showed him my driver’s license, and he looked at the picture on it — I had a beard when I took the picture, he made some comment about it, I forget what he said... look, what’s the sense of this, would you please tell me? Let’s get it over with, for Christ’s sake!”

“Over with? Michael, they’re going to charge you with murder!”

“I know what they’re going to charge me with, what do you think they’re going to charge me with?”

“Tell me what happened with the patrolman.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know what you said to him. I want to know what gave him the idea you’d killed Maureen and—”

“The idea?” Michael said, and rolled his eyes, and shook his head in disbelief. “It’s not an idea, it’s a fact. I did kill them. Can’t you understand that? I killed them, and I want to confess to the crime and get it over with. That’s what I want to do, and all you want to do is find out what I told the goddamn patrolman. That’s what I told him. That I killed them. That’s what I’m telling you. I killed them.”

“Were those your exact words?”

“Man, you never quit, do you?” Michael said, and let out his breath in exasperation. “I showed him the license, right? He looked at the beard in the picture, right? He said something about did I shave off the beard, and I said, Yeah, and then he said, Michael Purchase, is that your name? And I said, Yeah, that’s my name. He looked at me and he said, Are you any relation to Dr. James Purchase? And I said, Yes, I’m his son. Then he said, How long’ve you been here in these woods, Michael? And I said I couldn’t remember, I’d just gone in there and I guess I’d fallen asleep. So he asked me when I went in there and I said I guessed it was last night sometime, and he said, When last night? I told him I didn’t remember. He said, Where’d you get that blood on your clothes, Michael? I looked at him, he... he was looking me right in the eye, he said again, Where’d you get that blood on your clothes, Michael? And I just nodded and said, Okay, I did it.”

“Then what?”

“He had a walkie-talkie on his belt, he switched it on and called for somebody to get down there right away, said he had the killer.”

“Did he use that word?”

“Which word? Killer?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know. He either said killer or murderer, I don’t know.”

“All right, Michael, now listen to me. If you don’t want me to call in a lawyer who can help you more than I can, then you’ve got to at least listen to me and do what I ask you to do. Ehrenberg’s going to question you about last night. I want you to remain silent, Michael. That’s your privilege. They’ve already read your rights to you once, and I’m sure they’ll read them again before they start questioning you, and they’ll tell you it’s your privilege to remain silent, and that’s what I want you to do. I don’t want you to say another word about any of this. Not another word. Have you got that?”

“I’ve got it,” he said, “but it’s not what I want to do.”

“Michael...”

“I want to tell them.”

Jamie was waiting for me when I came out of the captain’s office. I told him essentially what his son had said, and he nodded and then asked Ehrenberg if it was all right for him to talk to Michael now. Ehrenberg told him to go on in. As soon as the door closed behind him, I said, “Mr. Ehrenberg, the boy’s about to make a statement against my advice. There’s nothing I can do about it, but I want to sit in on the questioning anyway.”

“That’s fine with me,” Ehrenberg said. “Few things I wanted to discuss with you while the father’s in there with him. First off, I checked with some of those people who were at the poker game last night, and it seems the doctor wasn’t losing when he left, way he told it to me, but instead was winning something like sixty, seventy dollars. Told the other players he was tired and wanted to go home, get some sleep. Now that doesn’t sound like a man who later spent an hour and a half drinking at The Innside Out. I don’t know where he went when he left that poker game, but I do know he was lying about being a loser, and my guess is he was lying about The Innside Out, too.

“I haven’t yet been able to reach the bartender who was on duty last night, but I spoke to the owners this morning, nice couple, they told me the bar was relatively quiet last night, maybe a half-dozen people in there around the time Dr. Purchase says he was there. So chances are if I go around with a picture of him, or even run a lineup for the bartender or the fellow they’ve got entertaining there, one or the other’ll recognize him if he was really there. Meanwhile, I’m wondering why he lied to me. I guess you asked him did he have anything to do with those murders?”

“I asked him.”

“And I’m assuming he told you the same thing he told me, that he didn’t commit those murders.”

“That’s what he told me.”

“That’s what the wife said, too, the former wife. I went to see her this morning, she claims she was home all night last night. Only trouble is, none of the neighbors are able to say for sure whether she was or not. Oh yes, she can reel off all the television shows she watched, but anybody could’ve got those from the TV Guide. I’m telling you all this, Mr. Hope, because I don’t know what’s going on with the boy saying right off he did it. I’ll be questioning him in just a little bit now, soon as his father’s done in there, but in the meantime it looks like I’ve got a man who was maybe lying about where he actually was at the time of the murders, and a woman who says she was home when for all I know she was maybe—”

“You little son of a bitch.”

The voice was Jamie’s, the words came from behind the closed door to the captain’s office. A pained look came onto Ehrenberg’s face as he turned and began walking heavily toward the door, as though Jamie’s outburst was not entirely unexpected, but was nonetheless an additional problem that had to be dealt with. As he approached the door, Jamie shouted, “I’ll kill you!” and Ehrenberg responded to the threat instinctively and immediately. He seemed almost about to thrust his massive shoulder against the door in imitation of movie cops breaking into a suspect’s apartment. He grabbed the knob and did indeed use his shoulder, but only as a forceless battering ram, opening the door and throwing it wide, and then releasing the knob and rushing into the room, directly to where Jamie and Michael were struggling in front of the captain’s desk.

Jamie’s hands were on his son’s throat. His face was ashen, his mouth skinned back over his teeth, his eyes red with rage. Michael danced a jig at the ends of his father’s arms, stepping again and again onto the photographs of the black girl that had earlier been on the captain’s desk and were now strewn on the floor. His face was flushed, he was choking under the tightening pressure of his father’s fingers. Ehrenberg clamped his left hand onto Jamie’s shoulder and spun him back and away from his son. I thought for certain he was going to smash his fist into Jamie’s face. It seemed the logical one-two action, spin the man around with your left hand, hit him with your right. But instead of hitting him, Ehrenberg reached out with his right hand to grab hold of the lapels of Jamie’s leisure suit, his fist twisting into the material. Effortlessly, he pushed him back against the paneled wall. Very calmly he said, “Now let’s just relax, doctor.”

“I’ll kill him,” Jamie said.

“No, you’re not going to kill anybody,” Ehrenberg said.

“Kill the bastard,” Jamie said.

Across the room, Michael was still gasping for breath. “You okay?” Ehrenberg asked, and Michael nodded. “Then I’d like to talk to you now, if that’s all right with you.”

“Yes,” Michael said. “Okay.”

“You monster,” his father said.