Read Somebody Else's Music Online
Authors: Jane Haddam
Somebody Else's Music (42 page)
“Oh, my God,” Kathy said. “Ms. Toliver. Are you all right? They said on the news that they'd arrested somebody we'd never heard of, so we thoughtâ”
“I'm fine,” Liz said, ripping out another page and tearing it, too, into quarters. She was going faster than she'd realized. There was a whole pile of page quarters on the floor now. Some of them had scraps of pictures on them with people she remembered.
“I'll get Debra on the phone right this minute,” Kathy said.
Liz said “thanks” and found herself staring down at a photograph of herself. She was standing next to Belinda Hart, who looked so relentlessly vapid she might as well have been a cartoon. The shock was the picture of herself, which was not a picture of how she remembered herself, or even as she remembered seeing herself in this same picture all the other times she looked at it. This Elizabeth Toliver was not a Betsy Wetsy. She had high cheekbones and enormous eyes, and even the incredibly awful way she dressed did not stop her from being beautiful. She started to tear it and then hesitated. She wondered if this was one she ought to keep. Then Debra came on the line and she looked away.
“Debra? This is Liz. Get ready. I've just fired Maris Coleman in the most offensive possible way and agreed to marry Jimmy in three weeks in the same afternoon. I need to order a dress at Carolina Herrera and get hold of those checks Maris forged. Do you think that's too much for me to ask of you?”
“If you've really fired Maris Coleman,” Debra said, “I will make myself your slave for life and peel every grape that even comes into the same room with you until the end of time.”
Liz laughed, and as she did she looked down at her hands. She was still holding the same page with the same photograph on it. She still looked beautiful. Belinda still
looked vapid. She tore it in quarters and then in eighths.
looked vapid. She tore it in quarters and then in eighths.
Sometimes you could keep a few things from the past and they wouldn't hurt you. Sometimes you couldn't. This was one of those times when you couldn't. Besides, she thought, she didn't care if she'd really been beautiful instead of ugly. She'd felt ugly. She'd lived in the conviction she was ugly. She'd been treated as if she were ugly, and stupid, and worthless besides.
She let the pieces of the page fall to the floor and then pulled out three pages at once, as much as she could get and still tear. She went on tearing all the while that she and Debra talked, until all the pages of the yearbook were nothing but scraps and confetti on the floor.
If he'd been somewhere elseâback in Philadelphia, still with the FBI, on any case anywhere where the local law enforcement had experience in murder investigations that went beyond the religious viewing of
NYPD Blue
âGregor could have gone back to Bennis until the police needed to take his statement, or written that statement up and gone straight back to Cavanaugh Street. He was tired and achy enough to do both. It had not been a good day. He'd never had time for a shower, and he felt it. Sweat was dripping off of him in odd places. His entire body felt sticky. He'd never really had a chance to take a breath and consider the situation they were all in in all its aspects. He really didn't like working on cases in a haphazard way. That was the FBI experience coming back to haunt him. City cops worked haphazardly all the time. They had to. There was too much crime and too much confusion to give them much time to think things through. The whole point of the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unitâbesides the practical one of providing a central database on serial killings that would make it possible for the police in one state to learn of a perpetrator's possible actions in anotherâwas to have agents who had the luxury of thinking through all the aspects of a case, and the ramifications, and the future problems. Right now he felt half-finished. He could lay out for Kyle Borden and the state police what Peggy Smith Kennedy had done
and why. He could even rely on the fact that Emma Kenyon Bligh was an eyewitness to her own attack to get them out of the worst of the problems a case like this would cause. What he could not do was to make the whole story gel in his mind, psychologically. It seemed to him that there was something fundamental they needed to know about Peggy Smith Kennedy that they didn't. Maybe it was just that he needed to know it. Cops and prosecutors were not famous for the deep way in which they understood the people they arrested and prosecuted. Cops were too busy making sure that they arrested the suspect without getting themselves or anybody else killed. District attorneys made their reputations on convictions. To get convictions, they needed only to be able to spin a coherent story for a jury and to keep that jury focused on the heinousness of a crime. The human aspects only got in the way. Gregor Demarkian was firmly convinced that the death penalty would cease to exist tomorrow if the majority of Americans were required to really know the men and women who were being put to death, instead of seeing them only when they were being painted as comic book monsters by the media. He was always profoundly shocked when an incident arose that seemed to indicate that he was wrongâlike, for instance, the execution of Karla Faye Tucker. Millions and millions of people had watched her interview on
60 Minutes
. Millions and millions of people had heard her speak a dozen times in the days before her death. She was a quiet, ordinary, not very threatening woman. Her crime had been committed under the influence of drugs andâmore telling to Gregor, although he'd never admit it to Bennisâof a man. She had even become religious in the way so many people said was so important to them. It didn't matter. They didn't care. They wanted her blood, anyway. It made Gregor wonder if there was any such thing as progress. We had trains and plains and automobiles. We had computers and microwaves and 1,500 television channels beamed in by satellite. We still reacted to our fellow human beings the way illiterate peasants had in the Middle Ages, when
the old woman who had lived next door for forty years could suddenly grow horns and a tail and be in league with the devil. Any moment now, it would start here, the thing that happened in small towns in cases like this. This morning, Peggy Smith Kennedy was a woman they'd known forever, a local teacher in a bad marriage, someone most of them remembered as a popular girl in high school. Tomorrow morning, they would bring out every even slightly odd thing she had ever done. They would rewrite her life the way they rewrote their own, but in the opposite direction. They would find signs and portents in every word she ever spoke and every night she ever came in late from a date when she was a teenager, every drink she ever drank when she was underaged, every lie she ever told to get out of the fact that she'd forgotten to do her homework or had spent too long necking to make it in for her curfew. In the end, only one of the things about Peggy Smith Kennedy's life would matter, and they'd get that wrong. Gregor could see it coming. He'd nearly gotten it wrong himself. He'd almost forgotten what it meant for someone to be an obsessive.
NYPD Blue
âGregor could have gone back to Bennis until the police needed to take his statement, or written that statement up and gone straight back to Cavanaugh Street. He was tired and achy enough to do both. It had not been a good day. He'd never had time for a shower, and he felt it. Sweat was dripping off of him in odd places. His entire body felt sticky. He'd never really had a chance to take a breath and consider the situation they were all in in all its aspects. He really didn't like working on cases in a haphazard way. That was the FBI experience coming back to haunt him. City cops worked haphazardly all the time. They had to. There was too much crime and too much confusion to give them much time to think things through. The whole point of the FBI's Behavioral Sciences Unitâbesides the practical one of providing a central database on serial killings that would make it possible for the police in one state to learn of a perpetrator's possible actions in anotherâwas to have agents who had the luxury of thinking through all the aspects of a case, and the ramifications, and the future problems. Right now he felt half-finished. He could lay out for Kyle Borden and the state police what Peggy Smith Kennedy had done
and why. He could even rely on the fact that Emma Kenyon Bligh was an eyewitness to her own attack to get them out of the worst of the problems a case like this would cause. What he could not do was to make the whole story gel in his mind, psychologically. It seemed to him that there was something fundamental they needed to know about Peggy Smith Kennedy that they didn't. Maybe it was just that he needed to know it. Cops and prosecutors were not famous for the deep way in which they understood the people they arrested and prosecuted. Cops were too busy making sure that they arrested the suspect without getting themselves or anybody else killed. District attorneys made their reputations on convictions. To get convictions, they needed only to be able to spin a coherent story for a jury and to keep that jury focused on the heinousness of a crime. The human aspects only got in the way. Gregor Demarkian was firmly convinced that the death penalty would cease to exist tomorrow if the majority of Americans were required to really know the men and women who were being put to death, instead of seeing them only when they were being painted as comic book monsters by the media. He was always profoundly shocked when an incident arose that seemed to indicate that he was wrongâlike, for instance, the execution of Karla Faye Tucker. Millions and millions of people had watched her interview on
60 Minutes
. Millions and millions of people had heard her speak a dozen times in the days before her death. She was a quiet, ordinary, not very threatening woman. Her crime had been committed under the influence of drugs andâmore telling to Gregor, although he'd never admit it to Bennisâof a man. She had even become religious in the way so many people said was so important to them. It didn't matter. They didn't care. They wanted her blood, anyway. It made Gregor wonder if there was any such thing as progress. We had trains and plains and automobiles. We had computers and microwaves and 1,500 television channels beamed in by satellite. We still reacted to our fellow human beings the way illiterate peasants had in the Middle Ages, when
the old woman who had lived next door for forty years could suddenly grow horns and a tail and be in league with the devil. Any moment now, it would start here, the thing that happened in small towns in cases like this. This morning, Peggy Smith Kennedy was a woman they'd known forever, a local teacher in a bad marriage, someone most of them remembered as a popular girl in high school. Tomorrow morning, they would bring out every even slightly odd thing she had ever done. They would rewrite her life the way they rewrote their own, but in the opposite direction. They would find signs and portents in every word she ever spoke and every night she ever came in late from a date when she was a teenager, every drink she ever drank when she was underaged, every lie she ever told to get out of the fact that she'd forgotten to do her homework or had spent too long necking to make it in for her curfew. In the end, only one of the things about Peggy Smith Kennedy's life would matter, and they'd get that wrong. Gregor could see it coming. He'd nearly gotten it wrong himself. He'd almost forgotten what it meant for someone to be an obsessive.
Now he walked down the long expanse of open room behind the counter in the main room of the Hollman police station and poked his head into Kyle Borden's office. Kyle was sitting at his desk, surrounded by state police, a frown on his face. On the desk in front of him, he had a legal-sized sheet of paper covered with lines and arrows in black marker. Gregor had written it out for him to make sure he understood just what had happened when and that he could explain it. It wasn't clear that this had actually worked. Kyle looked worried. The state police looked confused.
They all looked up when Gregor stuck his head in the office door, and Kyle immediately relaxed.
“Mr. Demarkian,” he said. “I'm glad you're here. I've been trying to explain this, but I think I keep getting bogged down in details. You want to tell them what you told me?”
“What I really want to do is call Bennis and have her
come get me. She must be somewhere I can get in touch with her.”
come get me. She must be somewhere I can get in touch with her.”
“I'll have Sharon call Ms. Hannaford. You sit down and explain things.”
Kyle left the office, but Gregor didn't sit down. Peggy Smith Kennedy was downstairs, locked up in one of the town's only two jail cells, but Gregor didn't know how long that would last. Mrs. Kennedy was entitled to a lawyer. As soon as they got into court, she would get one, and that would almost assuredly mean bail. Gregor wondered what a judge would make of a prosecution move to deny bail on the grounds of wife batteringâof Peggy Smith Kennedy
being
a battered wife. Because, assuredly, if that woman was allowed to go home, her husband would try as hard as he could to kill her long before the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania got a chance.
being
a battered wife. Because, assuredly, if that woman was allowed to go home, her husband would try as hard as he could to kill her long before the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania got a chance.
Kyle came back. “I found her. She wants to talk to you, too. She asked if it was okay for Elizabeth Toliver to leave town, and I said yes. It's okay, isn't it? You're not going to have us arrest her, too?”
“No,” Gregor said. “You may need her to testify to something or the other about what went on at the Toliver house on the day the dog was found or the day that the body of Chris Inglerod Barr was found, but if you can manage to keep Mr. Kennedy away from Mrs. Kennedy, that may not be necessary.”
“Why not?” one of the state police asked.
“Because,” Gregor said, “I'm fairly sure she'll be more than happy to enter a plea as long as the sentence tops out at, say, twenty years. The issue, for her, is not going to be taking the biggest possible risk to see if she can get off without any penalty at all. It might be if she were willing to let an attorney wage a battered woman defenseâ”
“Wait,” Kyle said. “I thought those were about women who kill the men who beat them, not about how they kill somebody else because their husbands beat them.”
“Actually,” Gregor said, “defense attorneys have taken both tacks. There was the Joel Steinberg case, with the child
in New York who was battered to death, and the woman involved, Hedda Nussbaum, I think, her defense was that she took part in the abuse of her adopted daughter because she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder because her husband beat her. Except that I don't think he was her husband. I think they'd been living together a long time, but that they'd never made it legal.”
in New York who was battered to death, and the woman involved, Hedda Nussbaum, I think, her defense was that she took part in the abuse of her adopted daughter because she was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder because her husband beat her. Except that I don't think he was her husband. I think they'd been living together a long time, but that they'd never made it legal.”
“So, did the jury buy it?” the other state trooper said. “Did this Hedda what's-her-name get off because her husband beat her?”
“No,” Gregor said. “But defense attorneys try the tack every once in a while. I was thinking about Karla Faye Tucker just a minute ago. Her case was like that. On drugs, battered and pathologically dependent on her boyfriend.”
“It didn't help her, either,” Kyle pointed out.
“No, it didn't,” Gregor said. “And Mrs. Kennedy's case is different, because in all those other cases the man was present at the violence and took part in it. In a way it was a kind of sex. I've always wondered about those cases, if the man sees something in the woman so that some part of him knows all along that she's attracted to the blood and the pain and the violence, or if she's normal enough when she enters the relationship, and thenâI don't know. Gets addicted to the man? Gets addicted to the sensation? You've got to wonder how it all starts, what she thinks the first time he goes violent, not against her but against somebody else. There's got to be some kind of psychological progression. I don't know if anybody understands what it is.”
“But that isn't what happened in this case, is it?” Kyle asked. “Stu wasn't there when she killed Chris Inglerod. He wasn't there when she attacked Emma, either. She was on her own.”
“Oh, yes,” Gregor said. “The only time he was there was when Michael Houseman died, and then he was the one who committed the murder. She only stood by and watched. Or maybe that's too passive. From what Liz Toliver has told us about what she heard that night, it's possibly
more apt to say that Peggy Smith Kennedy was a cheerleader off the field as well as on.”
more apt to say that Peggy Smith Kennedy was a cheerleader off the field as well as on.”
“Stu Kennedy murdered Michael Houseman,” Kyle said. “This is insane. I thought you said that the same person who murdered Chris murdered Michael.”
“No,” Gregor said, “I said the two murders were connected. And they are connected. All of this is connected. None of this would have happened if Michael Houseman hadn't been, what did you call him, a Dudley Dooright?”
“Yeah,” Kyle said. “He was a Dudley Dooright. Why did Stu Kennedy want to kill him?”
“Because Stu Kennedy was most certainly taking drugs that summer,” Gregor said, “and he might have been selling them. Do you remember that crime record my friend in Philadelphia got for me? You were impressed with the other murders that might have been done by razor or knife around the same time.”
“I remember that,” Kyle said. “There were a couple of them.”
“Yes, there were, but there was also one of possession with intent to sell narcotics. Everyone kept sayingâyou kept sayingâthat drugs were pretty much undergroud in Hollman in 1969. I didn't believe it. There were drugs everywhere in 1969. But I thought it was a good idea to see if there was any trace of evidence about the existence of drugs in the area at the time, and there was that. My guess is that there's a lot more if you look for it in the local records, maybe even in the local records here in Hollman. I wouldn't be surprised if your Mr. Kennedy hadn't been picked up once or twice for possession, or for intoxication, and just let go. That was before the drug war, when we treated casual users like casual users instead of the twenty-first-century personification of the Antichrist.”
“Druggies are scum,” one of the state troopers said virtuously.
Gregor rubbed his temples. “Anyway, that's what happened, that night in the park. I can't prove it. You're never going to try Stu Kennedy for murder, but I'd bet my life
on it. Stu Kennedy was doing drugs and possibly selling them, and Michael Houseman threatened to turn him in. My guess is that they had a confrontation in that park, on that night. If Michael Houseman had known earlier, he probably would just have told. They had a confrontation, and Stu had the linoleum cutterâ”
on it. Stu Kennedy was doing drugs and possibly selling them, and Michael Houseman threatened to turn him in. My guess is that they had a confrontation in that park, on that night. If Michael Houseman had known earlier, he probably would just have told. They had a confrontation, and Stu had the linoleum cutterâ”
“But
why
?” Kyle said.
why
?” Kyle said.
“If he'd started selling, for protection,” Gregor said. “And my guess is that he had started selling. That was what all this was about. Somebody we interviewedâI'd have to go back and check on whoâmentioned the fact that you could get stuff to get high with during your senior year in high school and the summer after. I think if we nailed that person down, we'd find that she'd gotten it from Stuâ”
“Why she?” one of the state troopers said.
“Because everybody important to this case is she,” Kyle Borden said. “It's been ladies' night all the way. So okay. Stu was selling a little dope in his free time, Michael Houseman caught him at it, Stu took what he had on him for protection and killed Michael Houseman. What was Peggy doing during all of this? What were the rest of them doing? Just standing there?”
“The rest of them weren't there when the murder took place,” Gregor said. “They were all very protective of each other, but none of them would have cared a damn what happened to Stu Kennedy. If they'd all been together, not one of them would have been in danger of being charged as an accessory, because they could all back each other up about not being a party to what happened, about only being witnesses. Only Peggy was with Stu when Stu killed Michael Houseman, and the problemâfor all of themâwas that Peggy
was
an accessory. That's what they all heard that night in the rain. That's what Liz Toliver heard that she's dreamed about ever since, except that she's been misinterpreting it. As far as I know, she's misinterpreting it even now. But the rest of them never did misinterpret it. They knew exactly what they heard.”
was
an accessory. That's what they all heard that night in the rain. That's what Liz Toliver heard that she's dreamed about ever since, except that she's been misinterpreting it. As far as I know, she's misinterpreting it even now. But the rest of them never did misinterpret it. They knew exactly what they heard.”
“And what did they all hear?” Kyle asked.
“They heard Peggy Smith screaming, over and over again,
âslit his throat slit his throat slit his throat.'
I haven't talked to the rest of them yet about this, but you'll have to. Liz told me the voice sounded like a woman's in the midst of sex. Having an orgasm, she meant. And that's what it was. Sex and death. The erotic possibilities of murder. It's too bad that Liz Toliver didn't realize at the time whose voice she was listening to.”
âslit his throat slit his throat slit his throat.'
I haven't talked to the rest of them yet about this, but you'll have to. Liz told me the voice sounded like a woman's in the midst of sex. Having an orgasm, she meant. And that's what it was. Sex and death. The erotic possibilities of murder. It's too bad that Liz Toliver didn't realize at the time whose voice she was listening to.”
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