Fatal Vision (19 page)

"Did you wash dishes?"

"Yeah, I did. I washed the dishes for her."

"Okay. I'm not sharpshooting you now."

"No, no, no, I understand that. But that's right, I did. I did the dishes. I—once in a while—she hated dishes. The only thing she hated more was ironing, and if she left them she'd feel terrible the next day 'cause she'd left them. And she usually leaves them again until night and they'd just pile up. So, every once in a while, when I'm feeling good, I do them for her and she thinks I'm a big hero the next morning."

Gradually, almost imperceptibly, the tenor of the questioning sharpened.

"I'd like to get down to some other things," Shaw said, "that might be a little bit more close to home. I'm sorry, but I have to ask you about them. And that's these."

He took out photographs of the weapons that had been found at 544 Castle Drive. "Okay," he said. "Now this knife you took out of your wife's chest is curve=bladed. I think it was curved because somebody used it to pry something open or stepped on it or something along that line. Does this seem like something you might have had around the house? A paring knife?"

"With a curved blade?"

"Yeah. A bent blade."

"No. I mean, not—not that I know of, no. I didn't know of anything like that. I don't, ah—you know, my wife had some paring knives. I don't recognize this one in particular. Especially, that would have been—I know we didn't have one lying around because, you know, I would throw something like that out. I wouldn't, ah—geez, my wife would keep it forever, but I wouldn't. And if we had a knife with a bent blade I didn't know about it. I didn't see it and I don't recognize this."

"You say your wife had some around?"

"Well, sure. She would—you know, she'd cook in the kitchen and she had plenty of knives laying around."

"How many—how many paring knives did she have?"

"I don't know, quite honestly, because one of her drawers she just kept all full of junk. Usually—I usually went and used a steak knife. I could never find a paring knife."

"There was another one that we found," Shaw said. "That would be this one here. You see, now that's pretty distinctive. It says 'Old Hickory' on there."

"I don't know this one. I'd have seen the 'Old Hickory' sign if we had that around. I don't know that one."

"Can you specifically say that it is not from your house?"

"Yeah, unless she got a new knife or something that I didn't know about, but I don't think—I never saw that. And usually I had a rough idea of what was there, and I—I would have seen a knife with 'Old Hickory' on it. I didn't see that. I never saw that. So I can say that that's not from my house."

"You did some building around there, didn't you?"

"Right."

"Some shelves and that sort of thing?"

"You saw my abortions."

"You had some scrap lumber around there."

"Right."

"Well, we think that this club that you originally thought was a baseball bat might have come from around the house. In fact, I'll show it to you. I don't know if pieces of wood will mean anything to you from a photograph, but, well, there's paint on it. In fact, we had the idea that you might have used this around the house."

"I never saw it."

"People use pieces of wood to pry open doors—"

"Right."

"—and windows—" "Right."

"—and for one thing and another."

"I don't recognize this. Now, I had—I always had some extra lumber laying around outside the back of my house, but I don't—how long is that? It's about three feet?"

"Yes, about three feet."

"Not specifically, no. I don't recognize this."

"Did you make the shelving in Kimmy's closet?"

"Right."

"There's a piece of wood there very similar to this. Very similar."

"Maybe it was around. I—I—you know, don't specifically recognize it from this—you know, from the photograph." "Did you have an icepick?"

"I don't think I had any two-by-twos, and this is a two-by-two. I—I know I didn't have any two-by-twos specifically cut that way. There was four-by-fours, I think, in scraps."

"Did you have an icepick around the house?" Shaw repeated, showing MacDonald another photograph. "Is that your icepick?"

"No, I didn't have an icepick."

"You did not have an icepick around the house?"

"Not that I know of, no."

There was a brief pause. Then Ivory picked up the questioning, his own mind focused on the drops of Jeffrey MacDonald's blood that had been found in front of the kitchen sink.

"Did you go into the drawers with the silverware that morning?" Ivory asked.

"Any time during the morning? Oh, you mean the morning that it happened?"

"Yes."

"Not that I remember."

"Did you clean yourself up in the sink there—the kitchen sink?"

"I don't think so. I remember washing my hands off, you know, in my compulsive manner. But I—I thought it was in the bathroom. I don't think I used the kitchen sink at all. I used the phone in there, and maybe when I was talking on the phone—"

"What is the deepest you went into the kitchen?"

"Christ, I don't know. I was just—I probably just stayed there to talk on the phone. I—that's all I remember, just talking on the phone."

"If we can drift back again," Ivory said, "you say during the initial assault you heard screams. Were they just screams or were they—"

"Words?"

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

"Like what?"

"Ah, my wife was, ah, saying ah—" he cleared his throat. " 'Jeff, why are they doing this to me?' " "Were you still on the couch then?" "Right."

"Did these screams continue, or did they cut out?"

"I, ah—I don't know, they asked me in the hospital and I don't, ah—I can't, you know—I don't remember any cutoff time specifically. They could or could not have continued, you know, while I was wrestling. I really don't remember, once this—really, the struggle was on. I remember sitting up and hearing them. I remember hearing my wife say, you know, 'Jeff, Jeff, why are they doing this to me? Help me.' I heard her screaming and I think I heard Kristy—Kimmy, the older girl, said, 'Daddy' —saying, 'Daddy, Daddy, Daddy.' "

"You fought your way to the entrance to the hallway?"

"Yeah, you asked me that fifteen times. Right."

"Could you see down the hallway? Did you see anything going on down at the end of the hallway?"

"No."

"What lights were on in the house?" Shaw asked. "Kitchen light?"

"Kitchen light was on. I left that on. And usually, we left the—the bathroom light on—the big bathroom in the hallway, so it's shining—so the hallway was a little lit for the kids. And that was—I think that was on, too—when they woke up in the night, and—''

"You said when you woke up you could see your wife," Shaw said.

"Well, I could see—yeah." "You could see in there?" "Right."

"You could see your wife. Was that because the light was on in there?"

"Well, I—I didn't say that I could see my wife when I woke up."

"Well, again, I'm not—I'm not—" "No."

"—snapshooting. I just want to know."

"When I woke up, the first thing I thought of was—you know, I'm ashamed to say—myself. I mean, when I woke up I said, 'Christ, I'm going into shock.' And then I realized that everything was quiet and I started—you know, I started to remember that I heard screaming, so I was—I really didn't even like look ahead. I—I went into the bedroom and then I saw my wife.

"In other words, I didn't lay on the floor and look up, if that's what you mean, and see her. I remember, as I got up—I was lying there and I was thinking, 'Christ, I'm going into shock.' And—see, that's the first thing that hits—hits me when I was chilling. You know, my teeth were actually—literally chattering. And the light was on, and—it isn't real bright when just the bathroom light is on.

"Now, at the hospital they told me these shakes and chills— they weren't from shock. So it must have been from the temperature. It must have cooled off, that's all I can tell you. You know, when I go over it in my own mind, it must have taken a long time for me to get the shakes and chills. My teeth were chattering, and that's a real chill, you know, in contrast to people when they say they're chilly. So if I wasn't in shock, the only thing I can say is—I have worked it over six million times—is that it must have been cold in that hall there and I was just cold from the cold."

"You think it was from the door being open?" Shaw asked.

"Right. That's what I mean."

"It was real warm when we got there," Shaw remarked.

"Oh," MacDonald said. "Jesus, I don't—well, the heat's always on. We just turn some of the radiators off if it gets too hot."

"Okay, this is the point," Shaw said. "You woke up, Captain MacDonald, while you were still on your living room couch, and you saw four people and you heard your wife somewhere."

"Right."

"You heard your daughter, right?"

"Right. This is what I, ah—this is what I can't figure out. Now, I've gone over this hundreds of times in my own mind, you know. Literally, all night long, many nights, and I—I don't—there's so many unanswered questions to me. If they—I assume they came in that back door. They had to come through there. You know, through my wife's bedroom—our bedroom. And I don't understand why, you know, by the time they got to me, that I still heard screaming. Or were there more people involved than four?"

"Four people are a lot of people," Shaw said. "Four strangers—'' "I know."

"—in a house your size are a lot of people."

"I know."

"There should be—"

"I know." MacDonald laughed.

Shaw did not laugh. "In my experience," he said, "and in his experience," pointing to Grebner, "and his," pointing to Ivory, "there should be a mess in your house. Not—"

"Right."

"There should be busted furniture and broken mirrors and bashed-in walls, and—"

"Oh, well—you people have more experience than I have," MacDonald said, "but I wouldn't normally—I mean, I wouldn't necessarily expect that. If someone is attacked when they're sleeping, I—you know, you might not get broken—"

"There aren't things out of place."

"Well, I don't know. What—"

"Does this suggest anything to you? Like maybe this group of people—"

"Knew the inside of the house? Or, yeah, were being careful, sure."

"Can you give us any better description of these people that you saw?" Shaw continued.

"I wish I had a Polaroid. You know, this—all I can say is everyone seemed moderate height. You know, this is ridiculous, I know, to you, but everyone seemed normal height. I don't really remember anything distinctive. I don't remember long hair on these people, and this is a little hard for me to figure out. If they were on, you know, LSD, or something, they're supposed to be hippies. They're not always. I mean, I've seen a lot of clean-cut Special Forces guys."

⁴
'How do hippies react?" Shaw asked. "Not hippies but people. How do people react when they are under the influence of LSD?"

"Well, anybody—"

"Are they capable of carrying out something like this? Coming to your house, out of all these other houses—"

"Well, now you're getting—now, see, you're getting to why they came to my house. If they—"

"Well, I'm not interested in why they came to your house, just for the moment. Let's say it was a matter of fate, okay?"

"All right."

"It had to be some house*."

"Right." -**

"Why not yours? Why not—"

"Right. Okay. All right. In other words, can they do this?"

"Can they carry this out, all this business?"