I could hear the traffic going by on the street. I closed my eyes and slipped my shoes off almost without moving. Scenes from the restaurant faded in and out, jumbled with scenes from the Santa Monica rooftop. Liz stared at me from across the table, but the image kept being supplanted by Morgan Stapleton’s legs, poking out from beneath her yellow sundress, and the clear droplets running down the side of Lady Justice’s icy face as she strained to hold those scales aloft.
4
Rebecca Steele lived in New York City and hadn’t seen her father in years. I’d gotten the number from Steele and I sat at my desk and stared at it. I started dialing and then set the receiver down. I had no idea what I was going to ask her. I made a list of questions, trying to make sure I covered everything. Three thousand a week and I didn’t know how to make a phone call. Somebody was definitely getting screwed.
Ten minutes later she answered the phone and I introduced myself. She seemed neither surprised nor supportive, and maintained a controlled ambivalence toward my questions. She said, “I’m not sure what I can tell you that hasn’t already been told a hundred times.”
Perhaps, but I wanted to hear her say it anyway. I scanned my list of questions. “Your parents split up for a time, about a year and a half before the incident.” It was a question I’d gotten from reading the newspaper articles. I felt funny saying ‘incident’, but I didn’t want to say ‘murder.’ I wasn’t sure what to say. “Do you recall that?”
“Sure.” She answered like she was on autopilot.
“Do you know what that breakup was about?”
“Not really. They weren’t fighting or anything. Mom just left and went to New York. She spent about a month here with the family — with her family.”
“Sure.” The distinction between her mother’s family and her father’s was clearly important to her.
“And then they got back together. I don’t know what it was about. I was thirteen, I hated my parents anyway, so I never asked about it.”
“So, at the time of the, murder, you hadn’t noticed any renewed animosity between them?” There, I’d said it — murder — but she didn’t seem to notice or care.
“Not at all. They were busy like always. Dad had just gotten back from Alaska a few days before. He was just in town for the weekend before going back to Washington.”
I struggled for another question and had to change the subject. “Ok, let’s talk about Matt Bishop. Was he a boyfriend of yours?” It was the first thing that came to mind.
“Oh, God, no. Nothing like that.”
“How did you know him?”
“He was just a kid that was around.”
“Y’mean just a neighborhood kid that you knew from where you lived?”
“Right.”
“My impression is that Matt did not belong to the same, shall we say, social strata as your family.”
“Certainly not.”
“But you still hung out with Matt and his friends.”
“Not really, no. He was just one of those kids that was always around. He had a crush on me and he used to go out of his way to talk to me.”
“And you invited him over to your house?”
“I wouldn’t say that. If a group of kids came over, he might be in the group. But then he started just coming around.”
“But you still used to let him in.”
“Yeah. I regret it now, of course, but I was an awkward teenager. I mean, it’s easy as an adult to think you’d just tell the guy to fuck off, but when you’re fourteen or fifteen you don’t behave that way.”
“I understand.” She seemed to be talking more. I kept my questions short and tried to let her ramble.
She went on. “Truth be told, he seemed dangerous. So he was kind of exciting. Toward the end, it got kind of weird though. He started writing me notes and leaving them in my bag. They got kinda sexual, y’know.”
“Did you have that kind of relationship with him?”
“You mean sexual? God, no. I mean, he was the kind of guy you could be dirty around, so we would joke about stuff. He took it too far though, writing me really disturbing notes.”
“Were they threatening?”
“Not threatening so much as just really perverted.” She paused, thinking. “Well, I dunno, maybe in retrospect it was threatening. Like I said, I was just a kid.”