Heat

11

The formal Q and A took place in the lieutenant’s office at the 87th Precinct at seven minutes past midnight on the morning of August 15, a week after the discovery of the body of Jeremiah Newman in his apartment on Silvermine Oval. Present were Detective/Lieutenant Peter Byrnes, Detective/Second Grade Stephen Louis Carella, and an assistant district attorney named Anthony Costanza. A police stenographer took down every word that was said. Costanza asked all the questions. The answers were supplied first by Anne Newman and subsequently by Susan Newman.

Q: Mrs. Newman, you’ve told the arresting officers that you were responsible for the death—

A: Partially responsible.

Q: For the death of your husband, Jeremiah Newman.

A: Yes.

Q: By partially responsible...

A: I was the one who first suggested it.

Q: Suggested what, Mrs. Newman?

A: That we kill him.

Q: To whom did you suggest this?

A: To my mother-in-law.

Q: When did you make this suggestion?

A: On the Fourth of July.

Q: That is the exact date?

A: The exact date.

Q: How do you remember the date so well?

A: There was a party, and Jerry got drunk again.

Q: Was your mother-in-law at this party?

A: The party took place in her apartment.

Q: And you say your husband got drunk?

A: Yes. As usual. We had to take him home shortly after dinner.

Q: By we...

A: Susan and I. My mother-in-law and I. We put him in a taxi and took him home. It was after we’d got him to bed that I first explored the idea of killing him.

Q: Why did you want to kill him?

A: I wanted to get out of a relationship that was suffocating me.

Q: Why didn’t you simply ask for a divorce?

A: What makes you think I didn’t?

Q: You asked your husband for a divorce?

A: On too many occasions.

Q: And what was his response?

A: He refused to give me one.

Q: So you decided to kill him?

A: Of course not, don’t be absurd! I had grounds enough to divorce him six times over, the man was a hopeless drunk! All I had to do was walk out, or throw him out.

Q: Then what made you...?

A: Do you think I’d have been rid of him? Really? Even if he’d given me the divorce I wanted? Really rid of him? Who do you think he’d have called whenever he was vomiting all over himself? First me, to tell me what a worthless artist he was, and then Susan to ask her to come take care of him. What good would a divorce have done?

Q: Was your mother-in-law in sympathy with your desire for a divorce?

A: Entirely. But she realized as well as I did that a divorce wouldn’t solve anything. He’d plague us for the rest of our lives.

Q: How did she react to your suggestion that you kill him?

A: She was in complete sympathy with it. She’d had her share of him over the years, believe me. Every time he got sick, he’d call Susan, ask her to come over to take care of him. Wouldn’t trust me to do it, oh no, needed his nurse. She said we’d be well rid of him.

Q: Was it decided that night... the Fourth of July... that you would attempt to murder him?

A: I’d say it was explored.

Q: But no decision was made.

A: No.

Q: When did you and she decide...

A: Three weeks ago.

Q: You decided to kill him.

A: Yes.

Q: What prompted this decision?

A: He told me he was going to change his will. He told me he was going to cut me out of his will completely.

Q: Why was he doing that?

A: Because I didn’t love him anymore.

Q: Were those his exact words?

A: Yes, he said he knew I didn’t love him anymore. Because I’d asked him repeatedly for a divorce. He told me he would never give me a divorce because he didn’t want to pay alimony, but neither would he see all his money go to me when he died. He told me I was stuck. He said it was a bad situation I just happened to be stuck with. And then he laughed.

Q: So you decided to kill him.

A: Yes. Before he changed the will.

Q: But, as you now know, he had already changed his will before—

A: Yes, but I didn’t know that at the time. I thought it was something he planned to get around to. After all, what was the rush? I was stuck, as he put it, so what was the rush? We didn’t know... I didn’t know... that it was already a fait accompli. He’d changed the will the day before he told me he was going to do it.

A: Did you report this to your mother-in-law?

A: Yes. I told her Jerry was going to change his will. I told her he wasn’t going to leave me a penny. The same as his father had done to her.

A: What was her response?

Q: She said we would have to kill him before he did that. I was sole beneficiary of the old will, you understand. I agreed to share everything with Susan if she’d help me do this thing, help me kill him. That was only fair. Her husband should have left those paintings to her in the first place. Half of her son’s estate seemed small recompense for the service she’d rendered both of them over the years.

Q: Did she agree to help you?

A: Yes. In fact, the way we would do it was her idea.

Q: Mrs. Newman, are you aware that in this state a husband cannot disinherit his wife?

A: What?

Q: I said—

A: No, I didn’t know that.

Q: Are you further aware that a person who slays a decedent is barred from taking under the will of the person slain?

A: I don’t know what that means.

Q: It means that even if you had killed your husband in time to have prevented the changing of his will, you would have been barred from inheriting whatever he’d left you.

A: I didn’t know that.

A: I’d like to ask your mother-in-law some questions now, if you don’t mind.

A: Yes, certainly.

Q: Mrs. Newman, you’ve heard everything your daughter-in-law just said to us...

A: I heard every word.

Q: Is it true that you and she conspired together to kill your son?

A: It’s true.

Q: Your daughter-in-law said that the method of murder, the way you planned to kill him...

A: Yes, was my idea.

Q: It was your idea to administer a fatal dose of barbiturates?

A: Yes. It was also my idea to do it while Anne was in California. We decided that would be the best time. While she was away. So that no suspicion would fall on her.

Q: Mrs. Newman, did you in fact administer a fatal dose of barbiturates to your son?

A: I did.

Q: When would that have been?

A: Last Thursday night.

Q: That would have been the seventh of August.

A: Yes, whatever last Thursday night was.

Q: Can you tell us what happened that night?

A: I simply called him and told him I wanted to see him about an important matter.

Q: What was the important matter?

A: It was nonsense. Just an excuse to go over to the apartment. I told him his brother, Jonathan, was in town and wanted to borrow money from me. I pretended to be seeking advice on whether or not I should lend him the money.

Q: Did he believe your story?

A: Who knows what he believed? He was drunk. As usual. Getting him to take the Seconal was truly child’s play.

Q: How did you get him to ingest a fatal dose of—

A: I told you. He was drunk. He’d been drinking before I got there, and he kept drinking steadily while I told him all about the imaginary loan his brother wanted. I didn’t want him to pass out on me. I’m a registered nurse, an unconscious patient is incapable of swallowing. Nor did I want to force-feed him. There was the danger there of his choking to death. I wanted it to look like suicide, you see.

Q: So what did you do?

A: I mixed the next two drinks for him. He drank them within minutes of each other. He always guzzled his whiskey and water as though afraid the supply would run out momentarily.

Q: Did you mix those drinks in his presence?

A: No, I went to the bathroom, to use the water tap there. It wouldn’t have mattered, he was blind-drunk anyway.

Q: Mrs. Newman, was there anything in those drinks besides whiskey and water?

A: Well, of course. There was the Seconal. I dissolved the contents of fifteen capsules in the first drink, and fourteen in the second. Seconal doesn’t dissolve too easily in water, but it’s easily soluble in alcohol. He never noticed anything at all, the drunken fool. It’s odorless, you know, but there’s a slightly bitter taste to it. He never noticed.

A: Why did you leave one capsule in the bottle?

A: To make it look like a suicide. I knew the fatal dose, I’m a nurse. I knew I’d given him enough to kill him. He went into coma shortly after he finished the second drink. And he died shortly after that.

A: Mrs. Newman, was the air conditioner functioning while you were in the apartment?

A: Yes. That was an idea I had before I left.

Q: What idea?

A: To turn off the air conditioner. So that your people would have trouble determining the postmortem interval. We were cutting it very close, you see, I should have done it earlier in the week, actually. But somehow... well, I just couldn’t muster the courage. And then, knowing Anne would be back early Friday morning, I went up there on Thursday night, determined to—

Q: What time would that have been, Mrs. Newman?

A: I went over to the apartment at four-thirty. Cocktail time, don’t you know? He was already drunk when I got there. I mixed the two drinks for him, one after the other, and he was dead by six-twenty.

Q: How do you happen to recall the exact time?

A: Because I called Anne in California at exactly six twenty-one to tell her it was finished. She told me she’d call later to find out if I’d got home all right, if I’d managed to sneak out of the building without the doorman seeing me.

Q: What time did you leave the apartment?

A: It must’ve been about a quarter to seven. After I’d wiped everything clean of fingerprints, anything I’d touched, the glasses, the thermostat, of course, the telephone, the doorknob, everything. And then, on the way home, I remembered what I’d forgotten to wipe. The doorknob outside the apartment. I had pulled the door shut behind me, and then locked the door with the key Anne had given me — it’s a deadlock, you see. And then, in the taxi on the way home, I remembered that I hadn’t wiped off that outside knob, my fingerprints would be on the outside knob. So when Anne called at eight that night, I told her to make sure she wiped off that knob when she got home in the morning, before she touched it. It would be all right for her fingerprints to be on it, you see, she lived there. But mine? No, that would have been a mistake.

Q: Mrs. Newman... did you also wipe your fingerprints off the Seconal bottle?

A: Yes.

Q: Why did you do that?

A: Well, because they were on the bottle, I was the one who’d handled the bottle.

Q: But surely you realized—

A: Only later. But by then there was nothing we could do about it, the police had already been in the apartment. All I could do then was hope and pray... well...

Q: Hope and pray what, Mrs. Newman?

A: That I wouldn’t be suspected.

Q: What do you mean?

A: Well, why would anyone suspect a mother of killing her own son?

He found Kling in the Swing Room downstairs shortly after the Q and A was concluded. The room was dark, Carella hadn’t bothered to turn on the overhead lights because he was only on his way through to the back door of the building and the parking lot where he’d left his car. At first he saw only someone lying face downward on one of the cots. Then he realized that the person was crying. And then he recognized him as Bert Kling.

He went to the cot.

He sat on the edge of it.

He put his hand on his friend’s shoulder.

“Tell me,” he said.