Marcia Talley - Through the Darkness

The article went on and on and on, dredging up every detail from Roger’s sordid and despicable past.

According to the reporter, suicide had not been ruled out.

Poor Roger , I thought, and then, poor Eva .

Leaving the newspaper lying open on the table, I rushed into the hallway to fetch my car keys. I had to go see my friend.

The picket lines were gone. That was a plus.

I parked my car near the deli on the corner of Melvyn and Annapolis Street. I circled the block around St. Catherine of Sienna Episcopal Church on foot, tearing down posters about Roger from telephone poles and fences, crumpling them up and stowing them in a plastic grocery bag I’d retrieved from my trunk.

It didn’t give me as much satisfaction as the first time I saw FOUND written across the top of one of Timmy’s posters on the America’s Most Wanted website, but at least I was doing something constructive.

When I telephoned her earlier, Eva said she’d be home that afternoon and she’d like to see me. We met at St. Catherine’s, in the garden, as arranged, and hugged each other, hard.

Eva spoke first. “I’m so happy that our prayers about Timmy were answered.”

“Yes. I don’t believe I’ll complain about anything ever again.”

I stepped back from the embrace, held my pastor at arm’s length and stared deep into her eyes. “But Eva, how about you?”

“Roger didn’t kill himself, Hannah.”

I thought Eva was living in a dream world but couldn’t admit it. I appealed to her logic. “But even after he was exposed on that television show?”

Eva clamped her lips together, her jaw set and determined. “Never. Not even for that.”

Thinking about Roger’s missing gun, I gritted my teeth and asked, “Was Roger shot?”

“No.”

“What did the medical examiner say, then?”

“Roger’s up in Baltimore now.” She glanced at her watch. “They should be calling me shortly with information.”

“Do you think it was an accident, Eva?”

“You saw the picket lines, Hannah. The hate in those people’s eyes.”

I sucked air in through my teeth. “You think Roger was murdered ?”

“I’m saying it’s a possibility.”

“What makes you think it wasn’t a suicide, Eva?” My friend was in serious denial.

Eva indicated the garden bench, and we sat down on it. Once we were settled, she continued. “Roger had recently taken out a sizable life insurance policy. If he killed himself the policy would be worthless.”

“That may well be true,” I said. “But perhaps Roger wasn’t thinking very clearly.”

“It wasn’t suicide, Hannah. I’m quite sure of that. Roger wouldn’t do that to me. As screwed up as he was, that man still loved me.”

Butterflies flitted around us, touching down with delicate feet on marigold after marigold. “But the paper said that the police had found a suicide note.”

Eva sniffed. “That’s true. Cassandra had asked Roger to come over to EYS and collect his things, and the note was found there.” Eva rolled her eyes. “They tell me it was a printout, for heaven’s sake! If Roger had killed himself, he’d at least have had the decency to write me a note. By hand.”

“What did the note say, Eva?”

She wrapped her arms around herself, and in spite of the heat in the garden, Eva shivered. “I don’t know. The police haven’t shared it with me.”

I reached out for Eva’s hand. “Roger was under tremendous pressure, Eva.”

She wagged her head vehemently. “Doubtless. But suicide wasn’t the answer.”

As if to end discussion on the matter, Eva abruptly changed the subject. “What’s happening to the woman who kidnapped Timmy?”

“She’ll be arraigned sometime this afternoon.” I shuddered. I remembered how it felt to be hauled off by the FBI, turned over to a pair of humorless U.S. Marshals, and arraigned at the Federal Courthouse in Baltimore. But I had been innocent. Joanna Barnhorst, in my opinion, deserved every hour in that cold, cold cell, and every rotten box lunch.

“Do you think the Barnhorst woman is sick, like Roger was?”

“I don’t think she’s playing with a full deck,” I answered cautiously, “but, no, I don’t think she’s mentally ill, at least not in the legal sense.”

I offered to buy Eva lunch. We walked the short two blocks to Regina’s Deli, where I bought a club sandwich for us to split, then we walked back to the parsonage and ate it in her sunny kitchen.

We had just slotted our plates into the dishwasher, and I had returned to full reversal mode, comforting my pastor and friend instead of vice versa, when the police called Eva with the medical examiner’s report.

Her ear to the receiver, Eva listened for a while, incomprehension written all over her face. “My attorney’s here,” she fibbed, with a sideways glance at me. “Do you mind if I put you on the speakerphone?”

Eva punched a button, and everything the officer was saying suddenly poured into the kitchen, as if through a child’s tin megaphone. I recognized the voice. Officer Ron Powers. “We first thought it was suicide, Mrs. Haberman, but evidence found at the scene is suggesting otherwise.”

“What evidence?” Eva demanded to know.

“A search of your husband’s former office, near where his body was found, has uncovered a bottle of Jim Beam, laced with Prozac.”

“But Roger didn’t drink,” Eva insisted.

“Maybe he didn’t normally drink, Mrs. Haberman, but his bloodstream was full of antidepressants and alcohol.”

“He died of an overdose?”

“We found water in his lungs. Your husband drowned, Mrs. Haberman.”

Eva plucked a tissue out of the box she kept next to the telephone and dabbed at her eyes. “But you told me there was a suicide note,” she continued.

“There was. When we searched your husband’s office, we found the note still up on his computer screen, but he’d printed out a copy, too. The office has networked their printer. Your husband’s note was in the printer tray near the photocopying machine.”

“So, what makes you think it wasn’t suicide, then,” Eva whispered. She sounded exhausted and drained.

“I can’t go into any details, of course,” Powers continued, but we’ve arrested your husband’s boss, Cassandra Matthews, and charged her with his murder.”

“Cassandra?” Eva’s face told the whole story. She didn’t believe in Cassandra’s guilt, not for a single minute.

But apparently there was enough evidence to satisfy the police, and that was the end of that.

Eva prodded Powers for details, but none were forthcoming.

“Don’t worry, Eva,” I said after she hung up the phone. “My brother-in-law is a cop. Maybe I can find out something from him.”

That’s how we found out sometime later that only two sets of fingerprints had been found on the whiskey bottle-Roger’s and those of his former boss, Cassandra Matthews.

And to put the icing on the cake, Cassandra’s were the only fingerprints on Roger Haberman’s keyboard.

Several days later I was sitting in my living room, catching up on some knitting I’d neglected since the winter Olympic Games-the ones in Nagano, not Salt Lake City-when somebody knocked at my door.

With a sigh, I laid down my knitting, and peeked out through the curtains. Eva Haberman stood on my porch. Incredibly, Cassandra Matthews was with her.

“Hannah,” Eva said after I’d opened the door and ushered the women into my entrance hall. “You remember Cassandra Matthews.”

“Roger’s boss?” I said cautiously, extending my hand. “We met at St. Cat’s, as I recall.”