Ed McBain - Driving Lessons

So if you can question a man because you hope to charge him with a crime, but then you can no longer question him after he’s been charged with that crime, she guessed that was sure enough ironic.

Yep, that’s irony, she thought.

How about that, Stephen?

How about that, hon?

A fine Friday-morning mist burnt away as Katie drove through the small village of River Bend, and then into the countryside again, where narrow streams wound through glades covered with fallen leaves. She drove onto a covered bridge, the interior of her car going dark, brilliant sunlight splashing her windshield a moment later. She hoped she wouldn’t get a migraine, sudden changes of light often brought them on. Stephen would fetch her two aspirin tablets and advise her to lie down at once. No migraine, please, she thought. Not now. No Stephen to offer solace, you see.

The towns, hamlets, villages and occasional city in this part of the state suffered from a watery sameness of nomenclature due to a natural abundance of rivers and lakes. Mary Beth Newell’s sister was a kindergarten teacher in Scotts Falls, named after the rapids that cascaded from the southernmost end of Lake Paskonomee, some twenty miles north-east of River Close, and within shouting distance of Twin River function, the county seat. If Andrew Newell had been charged with reckless endangerment, his attorney most likely would have asked for a change of venue and Alyce would have had to prosecute in Twin River J, as the town was familiarly known to the locals. Even with the lesser charge, Leipman might ask that the case be moved out of River Close. Either way, Alyce would go for the jugular.

Katie found Helen Pierce in a fenced-in area behind the elementary school. Katie had spoken to her only once before, on the telephone the night they learned Mary Beth Newell was dead. She had seen only police photographs of the dead woman’s body, and could not form any true opinion as to whether or not the sisters resembled each other. The woman now leading a chanting band of feathered and painted five-year-olds in what appeared to be a war dance was in her late thirties, Katie guessed, with soft brown hair and deep-brown eyes. She wore no make-up, not even lipstick. She had on a plain blue smock and Reeboks with no socks. She was also wearing a huge feathered headdress. Calling a break, she told Katie that this was an authentic Lakota Sioux ritual rain dance, and that she and the children were trying to break the twenty-seven day drought that had gripped the region.

‘Keeps the foliage on the trees,’ she said, ‘but the reservoirs are down some fifty percent.’ She waved her feathered dancers toward a long wooden table upon which pint cartons of milk and platters of cookies had been set out. Keeping a constant eye on the children, she walked Katie to a nearby bench, where they sat side by side in dappled shade.

‘Did your sister ever mention her visits to a priest at Our Lady of Sorrows?’ Katie asked.

‘No,’ Helen said at once, and turned toward her, surprised. ‘Why would she go there? Her church is St Matthew’s.’

‘The priest indicated that something was troubling her. Would she have mentioned that to you?’

‘No. But why is it important?’

Katie explained what a possible defense tactic might be. Helen listened intently, shaking her head, occasionally sighing. At last, she said, ‘That’s absurd, nothing was troubling my sister that deeply. Nothing she confided to me, anyway. Well... but no.’

‘What?’

‘She and Andy were trying to have a baby. Without any luck.’

‘Would that have bothered her enough to...?’

‘Well, Andy’s attitude might have annoyed her. But I don’t think she’d have gone to a priest about it.’

‘What attitude?’

‘He didn’t want a “damn baby”, as he put it. Went along with her efforts only because she threatened to leave him if he didn’t. But they argued day and night about it, even when other people were with them. He kept saying if they had a damn baby, they’d never be able to go back to Europe the way he wanted to. He studied art in Europe, you know, and his big dream was to go back there. That’s what he’d been saving for, and having a baby would ruin all that. I sometimes felt the reason she couldn’t conceive was because of Andy’s negative stance. I know that’s dumb, but it’s what I thought.’

‘But she never once mentioned seeing Father McDowell?’

‘No.’

‘Never mentioned whatever was troubling her?’

‘Never.’ She was silent for a moment, and then suddenly, as if the idea had just occurred to her, she asked, ‘Have you looked for a diary?’

‘No, did she keep...?’

‘Why don’t you look for a diary or something?’ Helen said. ‘She always kept a diary when we were kids. Little lock on it, kept it in her top dresser drawer, under her socks. I’ll bet anything she still keeps one, you really should take a look.’ And then, all at once, she realized that she was speaking of her sister in the present tense, as if she were still alive. Her eyes clouded. ‘Well, we were kids,’ she said, and fell silent. Across the yard, the children were beginning to get restless. ‘This whole damn thing,’ she said, shaking her head, ‘the damn stupidity of it... the... the very idea that some smart lawyer might try to get Andy off on a ridiculous claim of... of... Mary Beth being troubled!’

She rose abruptly.

‘Send him away,’ she said. ‘Send the son of a bitch away for life.’ Katie was about to explain yet another time that all you could get for vehicular homicide was a maximum of seven years. But Helen had already turned away, and in an overly loud voice she shouted, ‘OK, let’s make rain !’

The request Katie typed into her computer read:

1. I am a detective of the River Close Police Department, assigned to the Raleigh Station, where I am currently investigating the vehicular homicide of Mary Beth Newell.

2. I have information based upon facts supplied to me by Father Brian McDowell, pastor of the Church of Our Lady of Sorrows in River Close, that Mrs Newell had been coming to him ‘for spiritual guidance’ regarding personal problems.

3. I have information based upon facts supplied to me by Mrs Helen Pierce, the deceased’s sister, that she kept a locked personal diary in the top drawer of her...

Well, now, she thought, leave us pause a moment, shall we? Am I telling the absolute truth here? On an affidavit that will be sworn to before a magistrate? True, Helen Pierce told me her sister used to keep a locked diary when she was a kid, used to keep it in the top drawer of her dresser, is what Helen told me, Your Honor, I swear to that on a stack of bibles.

But she also said, and I quote this verbatim, ‘I’ll bet anything she still keeps one, you really should take a look,’ is what she told me. Those were her exact words. So, whereas I do fervently wish to send Andrew Newell away for a very long time, the son of a bitch, I don’t think I’m lying or even stretching the truth here when I say that I have information — based on facts supplied by her sister, Your Honor — that Mary Beth Newell kept a locked personal diary in the top drawer of her dresser, although not under her socks.

So, Your Honor...

Based upon the foregoing reliable information and upon my own personal knowledge, there is probable cause to believe that Mrs Newell may have confided to her diary information regarding her state of mind at the time of the incident, which information would help determine whether Mrs Newell was sufficiently troubled or distracted to have recklessly contributed in some measure to her own demise.