And I Don't Want to Live This Life : A Mother's Story of Her Daughter's Murder (9780307807434) (54 page)

Our name was finally called. It was our turn.

The door led into a large office with about a dozen desks in it. At the other end of it was
another
door.

We were led to the desk of an assistant medical examiner, who wore a white coat. She didn't acknowledge our presence. She was too annoyed.

“Are you trying to tell me,” she demanded of a man across the room, “that I have to type this thing myself?”

The man nodded.

“So where the hell are the stenos?” she hollered.

“At lunch!” he hollered back.

“You believe it?” she asked, of nobody in particular. “First some shithead steals my car keys. Now I can't get a typist in this place.”

She snatched a form from a pile, rammed it angrily into a typewriter. Then she finally looked at us. She gestured for us to sit down.

“I'm going to be performing the autopsy on the body,” she said brusquely. “I need some information about it.”

Frank nodded.

I shuddered. That was not a body. That was not an “it.” That was my daughter.

“Date of birth?”

Frank gave it to her. She started to type it in. She made a mistake, struck over it, then cursed, ripped the paper out, wadded it up, and hurled it at the wastebasket.

“God, why are you punishing me like this?” she asked the ceiling. “What did I do to deserve this?”

Frank and I exchanged a look of utter dismay. Who had the problem here?

She put a fresh form in the typewriter, typed in Nancy's name. A man came in from outside, took off his coat, and sat down at the next desk. He began to pick his lunch out of his teeth with a toothpick.

“Have you seen my car keys, Jack?” she asked him.

He shook his head.

“Some fucker stole 'em,” she said.

He nodded his head, spat into his wastebasket.

She turned back to us. “What did you say the date of birth was?”

Frank repeated it. She typed it in. Then she asked for “the body's” height, weight, and eye color.

“Fucking car keys,” she muttered as she typed in our responses. “Why me? Why me?”

Then she asked about distinguishing marks or scars.

“She has a number of them on her arms,” I said.

“What kind?”

“Long ones.”

“Lateral?”

“Yes.”

She typed in my response. “Any other ones?”

“Behind her right ear,” I said, “there's a scar from where she had the ear stitched on. That's fairly recent.”

The woman looked at me, incredulous. “How do you know all that about that piece of shit?”

I sucked in my breath. I looked at Frank, who gripped my hand tightly. I think he wanted to dive across the desk and kill the woman with his bare hands. I know I did.

“She's … she's my
daughter,”
I finally managed to say.

My reply went right by her. She removed the paper from the typewriter. “Do you want a copy of the autopsy or just the death certificate?”

“We don't need to see a copy of the autopsy,' Frank said. The woman nodded, motioned impatiently for two detectives who were waiting nearby.

“Okay,” one of them said to us, indicating the door at the far side of the room. “It's time to identify the body.”

Frank and I got up to go with him.

“Wait,” the other detective said to me. “Not you. You can't go in.”

“W-why?” I asked.

“You're the mother,” he said.

My mind raced.
You have to let me see her!
I screamed at him.
I gave birth to her! I have to know it's her! I have to see her! Let me go! Please let me go!

But nobody paid any attention to me. The words weren't coming out of my mouth. They were stuck in my throat.

Frank and I reluctantly let go of each other. He was taken through a door. I was led to a different waiting room, a smaller one. I was the only person in it. I sat down on the hard bench.

Frank joined me in there five minutes later. He was very pale. Horror registered on his face.

“Was it her?” I asked.

“You know, it's been almost five years since I quit, but I sure do feel like a cigarette right now.”

“Was it her?” I repeated.

“Yes, it was her.”

“How did she look?”

He sat down next to me. “She was in a body bag. Just her head was showing. She was blue white. She didn't look like our Nancy.” He swallowed. “You're better off. It was awful. You wouldn't have wanted to see her.”

But I
had
wanted to see her. I
needed
to see her with my own eyes, not just be told about it. It was important to me. I had to see her dead. Otherwise I couldn't accept the reality, and so commence my mourning. I had a
right
to see her. I was furious at being denied that right.

I still am. Why was I less prepared than a man to view her body? Why was I weaker? And why separate us at a time like that—when Frank needed my support as much as I needed his. We'd been through the pain of her life together. Why couldn't we be together for the pain of her death?

I know other mothers whose children were murdered. They, too, were denied the right to see the body by the medical examiner's office. I suppose the officials are well-meaning, but we should have been given our options. To me it was important.

So was being treated with simple human consideration. I fully realize that the coroner's office in a major city is inundated with death and that the people who work there must become hardened to it in order to function. But this does not excuse the way that particular medical examiner spoke to us. She did not deserve to have her job.

I haven't spoken to a parent of a murdered child who had quite so awful an experience as we did with that woman, but they did have to suffer through the same dehumanizing labeling. They, too, had to hear their child referred to as “the body.” This is a horrible thing to hear. We do not think of our child as an “it.” The coroner's staff people are undoubtedly too overworked to remember every deceased person's name, but couldn't they at least take the trouble to say “your son” or “your daughter” or even “your child”? Anything but “the body.”

Obviously, no one can make an experience such as this pleasant or easy. No one can bring your dead child back. But some measure of awareness and sensitivity by those who work at the medical examiner's office would go a long way in easing a parent's burden. If Frank and I had been treated with simple human consideration that day, I would not have been left with such nightmarish memories, memories I still carry around.

“Can we go home now?” I begged Frank.

“I wish we could. The rest of it—the DA, the trial—doesn't mean a thing. None of it makes any difference. She's dead.”

I rested my head on his shoulder. He put his arm around me. We sat there like that for an hour before the policemen finally came to fetch us and drive us downtown.

The New York City district attorney's office was on Centre Street, a large, worn, public building surrounded by other large, worn, public buildings. There was a soda vendor out front. I was thirsty. I asked one of the detectives if there was time to get a drink. He insisted on buying sodas for both Frank and me and told us to go ahead and relax for a few minutes on the retaining wall out front. After I drank my soda I called home.

Janet answered warily. She was relieved that it was me. There had, she said, been several more obscene calls. In addition, the press had been calling frequently—from as far away as London—to find out when the funeral would be. She had not told them.

Janet said she had spoken to the phone company. We would be given a new, unlisted number, but not until Monday, unfortunately. She ran down the list of friends and relatives she'd informed about the funeral. Susan, she said, had delivered Nancy's green dress to the funeral parlor. I thanked her for all that she and Susan had done. Then I spoke briefly with Suzy and David. So did Frank. Then the detectives came to take us inside.

There was a tremendous amount of commotion in the long, dark corridors. People were rushing in and out of offices, up and down stairways. I was afraid we'd get swept away. It was a battle to stay with our police escort. Finally we got to the office of the assistant district attorney who was handling our case. Two uniformed officers waited outside. They introduced themselves and shook our hands. They were the ones who had answered the call at the Chelsea and found Nancy.

“Oh, are you Nancy's parents?” asked a businesslike woman next to them.

“Yes,” I said.

“What do you do for a living?” she asked me.

“I'm in direct mail advertising,” I said, puzzled by her interest.

“For who?” she asked.

“Well, I just did a campaign for
Newsweek—”

“Newsweek?”
she said. “What a coincidence. I'm
from Newsweek—”

A reporter.

“Hey, don't bother these people!” ordered one of the uniformed officers.

“I'm not bothering her,” the woman insisted.

He grabbed Frank and me and herded us into the assistant DA's office.

“C'mon in here, folks,” he said. “You don't have to be hassled.”

I thanked him.

“You gotta watch out for those people,” he warned. “Moxie's what they get paid for.”

We sat down at a battered conference table. Soon Detective Brown and three others came in, then the assistant DA, who was young, aggressive, and rushed. He shook our hands.

“Mr. and Mrs. Spungen, thank you for coming. I want to offer you my condolences while I have the chance. I feel very sad for both of you. Please understand that I have a job to do. I may seem hard-hearted. I'm not. It's the job. I hope you'll understand.”

We both nodded. I thought it was considerate of him to say this.

The assistant DA quizzed us for about forty-five minutes. He asked us basically the same questions Detective Brown had. Our replies were the same.

“Okay,” he said, breaking off the session with a glance at his watch. “I have to be down at Sid's bail hearing in ten minutes. You folks want to come?”

“No, please,” I begged, paralyzed by fear at the thought of having to see Sid. I didn't care if the police thought fear wasn't warranted. I had it. “Can we not?”

“No problem,” he assured me.

Then he rushed out. The detectives took us down a back elevator and stashed us in someone's private office.

“Nobody will find you in here,” one of them said.

We sat there for an hour. When the detectives returned for us they filled us in on what had transpired at the hearing. I was glad we hadn't gone.

The courtroom had been mobbed with reporters, many of them from England. Malcolm McLaren was there, dressed in a red plaid jacket. Also in attendance were the Idols, ex-members of the New York Dolls who'd been Sid's backup band for his dismal solo debut at Max's Kansas City.

Sid, clad in black suit jacket, black shirt, black pants, and black shoes without socks, had to be led into the courtroom by two people.

“Boy, I don't know whether he was stoned or sick or what,” said one of the detectives, “but he was in really bad shape. His eyes were glazed over; he was shaking. The guy could barely stand up.”

The assistant DA argued that Sid, who wasn't an American citizen, should be denied bail on the ground that he might flee the country. Sid's lawyers (“a real fancy Park Avenue bunch,” the detective said) argued that New York was now where Sid worked, and that he would not leave it. The judge set a cash bail of $50,000. It
was a low figure, but all of it had to be raised in cash—not the ordinary one-dollar-for-every-ten bail ratio. This made it the equivalent of $500,000 regular bail.

“Did Sid say anything?” I asked the detective.

“One thing,” he replied. “He said he wanted to get out on bail right away so he could come to Nancy's funeral. He really wants to be there.”

“W-will he try to come?” I gasped, horrified.

“When is it?” the detective asked.

“Sunday,” said Frank. “We're not making it public.”

“Well, I'd say it's not too likely. Would you, Murphy?”

The other detective nodded. “Nobody can raise that kinda cash on a weekend.”

“Not even a guy like McLaren?” asked Frank.

“Monday. That's when he'll get out, most likely.”

“Anyway,” added the other detective, “say he does get out Saturday. He can't leave the state.”

“Who's going to stop him?” I asked.

“He'd be in violation of his bail,” the detective said.

“Who's going to stop him?” I pressed.

“We do the best we can, Mrs. Spungen,” he said.

I couldn't believe this. The bail process made no sense to me, still doesn't. They were saying they thought he'd murdered my daughter, but they were setting him free in exchange for some cash—free to come to Nancy's funeral, to our home.

He knew where we lived.

The detectives led us back to the car and drove us back uptown through rush-hour traffic. At one point an ambulance was stuck in the traffic with us, even though its siren was on and its lights were flashing. Nobody would get out of its way.

When the ambulance passed us, I saw that there was a person being attended to in it. For an instant I saw Nancy in that ambulance, her life bleeding out of her. I shuddered, gripped Frank's hand.

Then we were back in our own car, heading home on the New Jersey Turnpike. The awful day was over.

The whole way home, I dwelled on a strange realization—that for me this day, the day after Nancy's death, was so much like the anxious day after her cyanotic birth. Both days had found me spending endless hours in grim, institutional corridors—hurting, confused, uncertain of the future. My child was lost to me. She was
in someone else's hands, some all-powerful official. Both days had been Fridays.