Murder in the English Department (16 page)

‘Where will you be going?' Nan asked politely.

‘Back to the family place outside Baltimore. Just for a couple of months, just until my head is clear.'

Does one clear the head by saving the neck, or vice versa, wondered Nan.

‘I guess this sounds like running away. I've never been very competent with the practical parts of life, packing a suitcase, getting my car fixed.' Marjorie rambled as if she had lost the end of her sentence.

Nan waited nervously. She had never heard Marjorie get this unstrung, this personal.

‘That was always taken care of,' Marjorie continued. ‘Everything was taken care of at home. I know I've got to become more independent. But right now I just need …'

This is it, thought Nan. She waited. Then watched, amazed, as Marjorie composed herself.

‘I hope to be back in May,' said Marjorie.

‘Well now,' said Nan, pausing, waiting for some larger voice to take over, to say the right thing. When they both grew conscious of the silence, Nan said, ‘I've found you to be one of my best students. I've come to respect you.'

Nan noticed a blush on Marjorie's right cheek. Her eyes were cast down. Was she going to cry? Nan could see just how young and naive Marjorie was under her chic feathers. And for the first time Nan felt more than compassion. She felt a real fondness.

‘Please tell me if there's anything I can do.'

‘Thank you. You've been a great help already. On my thesis.' Marjorie stood up to leave. ‘Thank you again.'

‘Good luck,' said Nan.

‘Goodbye,' Marjorie shut the door behind her.

Nan rested her head on the desk. Clearly, Marjorie had done the best thing. Marjorie was a survivor. Best to get out of the picture. Nan tasted the panic again. It felt terrifying to be abandoned by the creature you were protecting. Yes, Marjorie was doing the right thing. But was Nan? Was she being self-destructive? Was she being stupid? No, she was innocent. Now, Nan felt possessed by fatigue. Groggily, she remembered that time in childhood when Shirley broke a vase at Sears. The clerk had insisted it was Nan. They were going to call her mother if she didn't confess. But Nan wouldn't tattle, and her clear brown eyes convinced them to let both girls go. Crazy thing to remember now. Not until a loud thumping broke into her fuzzy head did she realize she had been asleep. She looked out the window to a sky turned a dirtier grey. The Campanile said 4.30. She would have only an hour before sunset.

A loud thumping, a knocking on the door. Wearily, she answered, ‘Yes, come in.'

Lawrence Craigmont ambled through the doorway.

‘Good afternoon,' she said formally. These were not her office hours. She wasn't required to have a bedside manner.

‘I just wanted to talk with you about the paper,' Lawrence said. ‘Wouldn't it be better if I compared …'

‘We discussed this for an hour yesterday,' said Nan.

‘Yeah, I know,' Lawrence persisted. ‘But I've been doing more thinking.'

‘Why don't you just keep right on thinking,' said Nan, squashing the sarcasm that was creeping out the corners of her voice.

Lawrence looked confused.

‘Please come back during office hours,' she said more patiently. ‘I have another appointment and I'm already late.'

‘Oh, OK,' Lawrence said amiably. ‘I guess I could use some more time to put my thoughts in order.'

Nan felt a twinge of remorse as she thought about that question on the student evaluation forms: ‘How available was the instructor for consultation?' But hell, if it were a choice between popularity and sanity, she would choose a solitary walk every time.

Prime time for a walk, thought Nan, one of those last afternoons in winter when the greyish-brown colour hugs the ground and the branches of the trees. Within the next week or ten days, the land would spill over in green. Nan liked the late winter, a time of simmering. For all the trauma of these last two months, she knew the trouble would pass. But would she ever know if Marjorie had killed Murchie in self-defence? Regardless, was murder a justifiable response to rape? Nan ached from the urgency of these questions. But she had no doubts about her right to protect Marjorie. And despite Matt's warnings, she let herself feel that a spring without Angus Murchie would be a great relief.

The sun would last forty-five minutes. She had just enough time to climb to her spot by the radio tower and sit for a while. On the way up, she could see Contra Costa County on the left and over to San Francisco on the right. Sometimes the Bay Area seemed the most perfect part of the world—warm, beautiful, vibrant. Maybe this was a touch of spring fever, but Nan felt more optimistic than she had in months. Yes, she would get tenure. Marjorie would remain safe. And Lisa? Fantastic as it sounded, Nan felt that somehow in saving Marjorie, she was paying dues for Lisa. She would take care of Marjorie if god—sometimes she had to believe—would take care of Lisa. And from the look of this crimson and coral night, spring was coming sooner than any of them expected.

Chapter Sixteen

THE SLIGHTEST NIGHT SOUND
always startled Nan. Her apartment was so small that she could hear everything. And everything sounded like a burglar fiddling with the lock or a rapist unhinging the windows. So, before she went to bed, especially these days when she was sleeping alone, she would take three or four Sleepese tablets. They could carry her through an eight-point earthquake. Thus it was with surprise and great drowsiness that she surfaced to consciousness on Friday morning in response to the persistent ringing of her doorbell.

Oh yes, Lisa was coming, Nan remembered foggily. No, that was tonight. And this was only—Nan peered at the clock—only seven a.m. Who could it be at this hour? She fumbled around for her robe, embarrassed by the big ketchup stain that she had been intending to wash out for days.

The bell rang once again.

‘Coming,' she called, feeling around for her slippers. Suddenly she had a thought. They came in the morning. Recently many rapes around campus had been committed just after dawn.

She tiptoed to the door and looked through the safety hole. Outside was a husky policeman and, behind him, two other officers. One was a woman. The other was tall Officer Ross.

‘What the hell,' she began to say and then swallowed it.

‘Who is it,' she called. They could damn well announce themselves. Imagine waking a decent citizen at dawn, coming to her house without warning. Who did they think she was? Some kind of criminal?

‘Berkeley Police, ma'am,' said the husky man.

Nan recalled the visit from Officers Ross and Rodriguez. ‘Just the truth, ma'am.' These people probably did believe in facts and fairness, even in objectivity. Nan was not aware of how long she had spent in the dusty recesses of her mind until she heard the officer's voice again. Somewhat louder this time.

‘Please open the door, ma'am. Berkeley Police for Miss Weaver.'

‘I am Nan Weaver,' she said, opening the door while keeping one hand over the ketchup stain.

If They Come in the Morning
, Nan now remembered, was the title of Angela Davis' prison book.

‘Professor Weaver,' the man continued, ‘I'm Officer Newman and I have a warrant for your arrest.'

‘Arrest on what charge?' Nan said, with all the dignity she could manage. Could they detect the paralysis in her tongue?

‘Homicide, ma'am,' Officer Newman replied.

Nan was wide awake now. Cool and practical. She recalled the night of Murchie's death. Again the automatic pilot took over.

‘Well, I would like to call my lawyer.' Her voice sounded calm. However, Nan worried that Amy wouldn't speak to her after the Grand Jury scene. Of course she would. This was, this was an
arrest
.

‘And I should like to get dressed properly,' she said. Even in her amazement, Nan had not removed her hand from the ketchup stain.

The husky policeman conferred with the woman on his right. Meanwhile, Nan was staring at silent Officer Ross. At Judas. Why had he picked her? Why of all the people they had interviewed? There was something unpleasantly familiar in Ross's face. Had he taken one of her classes? Perhaps one of those large lectures? Had he earned a D or an F and hated her forever after?

‘Of course you may dress,' said the husky man who was beginning to sound more like a nurse than a cop. ‘Officer Bendix here,'—the policewoman stepped forward—‘Officer Bendix will accompany you while you dress and make one phone call.'

The ride out to Santa
Marta Jail
was especially pretty early in the morning. Nan was being taken straight to the big county facility, they explained, because the Berkeley city jail was full. Nan had been to Santa Marta once before, ten years before, after a People's Park protest. She had been arrested with dozens of others for trying to stop the university bulldozers from making a parking lot out of a communal garden. (The demonstrators had been shoved into a paddywagon, their eyes smarting from tear gas. They had been transported in a windowless, airless van for miles and miles. Were they being taken into the Nevada desert? When the doors opened, Nan had been relieved to see the hills of Southern Alameda County.) Santa Marta, Nan now knew, was in Pleasanton, only a few miles from Hayward.

This morning she felt less like a criminal than she had as a political protester ten years before. Today she was a precious package, escorted in a car by two earnest couriers. Did they think she did it? Did Officer Newman, who was driving the car, and sweet young Officer Bendix sitting here in the back seat, honestly think she was guilty of murder? If so, they kept it to themselves. Perhaps they even sympathized. Nan remained silent. She had watched enough Perry Mason shows to know that she mustn't divulge anything except name, rank and social security number. At one point Newman asked if she minded him smoking. And since she didn't think she had any more to lose, she acknowledged that she did mind. The highway signs read Dublin, Tasajara Road, Eden Valley Road. Beyond them, Nan could see the fertile vineyards growing into an early spring.

Santa Marta looked
more like
a decaying resort than a jail. The weathered white buildings with green shutters reminded her of Spring Lake, New Jersey. And those irises in the parking lot! Nan was astonished by the profusion of pale purple irises. The first note of surrealism. As the day passed, she found it harder and harder to believe that she was really being stripped, searched, questioned, imprisoned. In the past she might have imagined many reasons for going to jail (as a participant-observer for Amnesty International, perhaps, or to teach creative writing, or to protest a traffic ticket). When she was a kid she had always regarded prison as a dramatic movie set, fancying herself as a Rita Hayworth type, a beleaguered widow fighting her way through an unjust sentence. That's it, Nan thought as they fingerprinted her, maybe the whole thing, the arrest, the imprisonment, was one of those cinematic Sleepese nightmares. Irises in the parking lot.

The day plodded on with a series of interminable questions. Interviews by the police, by the prison authorities, by the psychiatrist. Intense interviews executed in quick provocations and barbs and bordered by long periods in vacant waiting rooms which smelled of pee and disinfectant. Naugahyde couches and arborite tables rattled around in large, green rooms. She tasted fear, and when she swallowed the fear, she tasted terror. Arrested. She had thought this could never happen. Now the next step would be a hearing. And then? And then, Nan tried to convince herself, she would be acquitted. She sweated profusely in her prison T-shirt and green work pants. Mouldy green, so much green, a sadistic imitation of nature. The buildings were hot and stuffy as if overheated with despair. Nan remembered reading in the
Chronicle
last month, or was it last year—time on the outside already marked a different order—that Santa Marta was overcrowded, yet somehow they had been able to preserve acres of waiting rooms and endless corridors which echoed with the reluctant footsteps of her new regulation shoes. All day Nan walked and waited and watched. The matrons paced together in pairs, fingering their keys and whispering (why were they whispering?) like nuns saying the rosary.

Before Nan was assigned to a cell, among ‘the females', the matron informed her about ‘the feeding times'. She pictured baboons at the San Francisco Zoo.

Nan's cellmate greeted her with a doleful scorn from the bottom bunk. This woman was twenty at most. Silent, she clearly resented the intrusion. Nan looked away, trying to concentrate on the tiny space, but there wasn't much to see—two beds, a toilet in the floor—just a cold concrete cell. She wanted to apologise for imposing.

‘I'm Nan Weaver,' she said, extending her hand.

‘The professor,' said the small woman on the bottom bunk who kept her hands to herself.

‘Yes,' stumbled Nan, ‘how did you know?' (Maybe she
was
here to teach creative writing. Maybe this was her first student.)

‘News gets around,' said the woman, winding a strand of long brown hair over her index finger. ‘Lots of time to talk when there's time to talk. But that ain't now.' She picked up a Spiderman comic book. ‘You'll excuse me, Professor,' she laughed, ‘but I've got to catch up on my homework.'

Nan nodded and climbed to the top bunk. This could be more unpleasant than she had imagined. She stretched out and closed her eyes.

‘Not to be rude, Professor,' came the small voice from below. ‘My name's Judy Milligan.' She laughed again—in sarcasm or embarrassment, Nan couldn't tell.

Nan reassured herself that she would not be here long. She would have a quick hearing, establish that they had no evidence and that would be the end of that.

Tomorrow Amy would come back and settle everything. Yes. She would be out of this place in a week. Meanwhile, the experience would do her good. Rita Hayworth movies were no way to understand the prison system.

Bang, slam, bang. A sudden thunder above. Nan opened her eyes to the strange sound and stared at the shoes of a guard on the catwalk above her bunk.

Nan was right about Amy.
Of course Amy would pull through and take the case. But she was wrong about the arraignment. Nan was not released. Although it was unusual for a respectable university professor to be denied bail, Murchie's cousin-in-law was doing everything to turn the screw.

She would have a preliminary hearing in three weeks. Then a trial. She wished she could confide in Amy, but she knew Amy would not allow her to continue protecting Marjorie. Amy would not understand. Most sensible people would not understand. Nan, herself, did not completely understand. She was a sophisticated political person who knew that innocence was no defence in a sexist, racist legal system. The courtroom was not run with the same mercy as the Sears vase department. She knew she would get acquitted as much as she knew anything in her whole life, but Nan's confidence had nothing to do with clever pleas or California statutes. It came from an old place she used to call faith. It didn't make sense to defend Marjorie, yet Nan knew she was right.

One afternoon, Amy came to the visiting room bearing fresh news.

‘Apparently Johnson, the custodian, is the only witness they have,' Amy told her.

‘What do you mean
witness
?'
Nan whispered hoarsely.

Amy ran a hand through her short black hair. ‘Calm down, I talked to Johnson, a nice guy. But he says you were the only person there on New Year's Eve besides Murchie.'

‘And besides him,' said Nan automatically.

‘Yes,' nodded Amy, ‘but he's not a very likely suspect.'

‘What are you getting at?' Nan asked nervously, staring at the putrid green ceiling that was peeling worse than her classroom in Wheeler Hall.

‘The coroner's report was clarified yesterday,' Amy was explaining, or was she accusing? Obviously, she knew Nan was holding back something.

Nan concentrated on the face of her lawyer, her friend, to prevent her own face from revealing anything.

‘Apparently, Murchie was found with his pants down,' said Amy. ‘The coroner says he was in the midst of “sexual activity”.'

Nan nodded, again with a completely passive expression. All the wretched smells of blood, semen, sweat and fear came raging back over her. Sometimes, in the intervening weeks, she wondered just what she had seen. What she had heard. How much of it she had just imagined. But now, with the coroner's report, her worst memories were confirmed.

‘Nan,' Amy spoke anxiously, ‘you've simply got to tell me all you know about this.'

‘Nothing,' said Nan, watching a pair of women hunched together at a table across the room. Were they lovers? Lawyer and client? Mother and daughter?

‘Nan.' Amy's voice was angry now. Her eyes were terrified.

Nan stared back at her friend. She wondered whether Amy would ever understand. She sighed, ‘There's nothing to say, really. I didn't kill Angus Murchie and I don't know who did.'

The noises at Santa Marta
made incessant assault. The slamming of iron doors, the whining radio music, the chattering voices, the billy clubs closing down with thudding finality. Nan remembered these noises as she tried to sleep, long after lights out. She couldn't buy Sleepese in the prison canteen, so she spent her nights in fantasies, a semblance of dreaming. She would imagine Marjorie Adams recuperating in rural Maryland, riding her mother's horses through the hills. Sitting in front of a huge fireplace sipping cognac and reading Iris Murdoch. (Iris. Huge pale purple irises.) Marjorie would sleep late in the morning, awakened by a servant carrying fresh coffee in a Limoges cup. Marjorie Adams was as safe in her distance as Nan was in her innocence.

One night, as Nan lay still, careful not to disturb Judy Milligan whose miraculous snores gave her great hope for human survival, Nan had more fearful fantasies. What if it came to conviction? She was no martyr. At that point, she would tell about Marjorie Adams. But what if Marjorie would not come forward? Nan had very carefully removed all of Marjorie's traces with the scarf. And she had returned the scarf. Shuddering under the thin prison blanket, she asked herself again, what if it came to conviction?

As much as Nan tried not to think about that, her mind turned to logical consequences. She would be sent up to Frontera, the women's prison in Southern California. That was where they had sent Wendy Yoshimura last year. Wendy Yoshimura, arrested with Patty Hearst, but not nearly so likely to have a Presidential pardon. Nan imagined talking with Wendy about politics and about a few mutual friends, but most of all about the brown hills of Alameda County for which they would both spend years in longing.

This was ridiculous, Nan reminded herself. She was getting carried away. She had to keep up her spirits. It was her only protection.

So she turned over and thought of Lisa. Of Lisa's letters. She had received one every day since the arraignment. Silly cards with joking messages. Long epistles enclosed about how Lisa wished she could visit Nan. About how she was beginning to feel better. Please god, she was recovering. More tests this week.